Finders, keepers
by Darth Krande
Summary: A few days after running away from the Black family, Sirius finds a four-year-old Parselmouth. A small child who will do everything not to go back to the orphanage from where he had been time-displaced.
1. Chapter 1

For somebody only four years and three months old, he had already learned to hate everyone around him. People were mean! The boys in his room, the girls in the other, and definitely the adults…. He always watched them with unveiled envy interact with each other, in a fashion that made them happy, in a fashion they never showed to him. With his four years, he couldn't tell what it was, he only felt something was missing. Whenever adults came to take a kid home with them, he only got a cursory glance and a grimace of disgust. He never understood. The nurses said he was a monster, but never bothered to elaborate. Once an older boy (one just brought in after his parents haddied of some sickness and the rest of the family refused to take him in, thinking he would infect them too) told him he was hissing in his sleep. Like a snake, that older boy told him. He also told him what a snake was.

Then, in two or three days, that boy died too.

He never understood what death was. Something horrible, something everybody feared, and did their best to avoid. One morning the boy was there, pale and giving odd sounds, then in the afternoon he had been moved to the far corner of the dorm, and the next morning, the adults had put him in a bag and he hadn't resisted. Never had they talked about him again. He had been forgotten and ignored.

That was a very, very scary prospect for a boy of four years. He didn't want to die, ever.

"Would you rather stay here forever?" an adult once asked with disdain.

No, not that, either. He wanted to be where he belonged.

He'd always felt there was something he had in himself and the people around him were lacking, but he didn't know it was called magic. He didn't, until magic found him coiled up in his bed one morning, in the shape of a fistful of blue, glittering time-sand.

It was like wind had blown sand in from the streets, only, it was coming from the far wall's direction. With round eyes, he stared at the shining particles, as nonexistant wind moved them closer. Clearly it was something nobody had control over, like death. He hid under the blanket. He still felt it on his skin when the blue sand hit him, exactly like when somebody threw a fistful of dirt at him.

Then he lost track of whatever was going on. It was like being thrown out of the bed, tossed around in all directions at the same time, until he finally hit something hard and damp. He let out a frightened hiss, instinctively calling for help in the language that he hadn't learned from any human. Humans were no help in life, he had learned that already.

It was cold, and dark, and raining. The soft lights from fire were so distant, so unreachable, something he had always been denied. There were families there. And there was only cold, wind and rain out here where he was.

He was on a street of some village.

"They say never look baaaack! Ha haaa!" he heard from somewhere. A very loud roar was approaching, and bright light shone straight into his frightened, wide eyes. Then, "Merliiiiin!" and the loud thing passed by mere centimeters from him.

Whatever that thing was, it had lights on the rear and in the front, and a man in a red jacket was sitting on it. The newcomer mumbled something, then without hesitation he picked the child up. Immediately he was dry and warm, as if he had never been thrown out into the rain by something he couldn't even begin to understand.

He never liked being lifted from the ground, but this one time he wouldn't resist. Besides, the red-clad man wasn't trying to cuddle him, just held him tight with one arm as they rolled to one of the village houses. That was acceptable. And much better than being left in the rain.

Inside, he got gawked at by two other men and two women, given some strange smelling but comfortable clothes, and – hot cocoa. Anything was agreeable as long as cocoa was included, so he took what he could. Then, when they had finished their business with him, he was put in an adult-size bed in a room he would only share with the one who had found him. Again, this was agreeable. Said adult joked something about him hopefully not talking in his sleep. That, he hoped too. Based on what he knew about humankind, they wouldn't exactly react well to his hissing.

But, as he found out later, he shouldn't have worried, the adult did enough sleeptalking for the two of them.

-?-

Morning proved more stressful: the adults' patience seemed to have run out during the night, and throughout breakfast they constantly were asking him about any way to identify him. He was, however, determined not to give them any lead: he'd been told at the orphanage often enough that in case of ever getting lost, he should just give his name to any adult and they would be able to take him back. Like Hell would he assist to that! Now that he found a place where hot cocoa came in spades!

His silence met pitying looks. Now that he was paying attention to details, all the adults were under the impression he'd been sick (they were using another word, but this was what it meant) after what had happened, and they concluded he only needed time to heal.

The oldest man, whom others called either Dad or Fleamont, was the most insistent to find his family. The oldest woman, named Mom or Euphemia, was a close second and unlike Fleamont, she also had a tendency to pickhim up at random times, or hold him so closely he almost suffocated. At times like that, he really considered volunteering his name. But then he was always released, and also there were sweets on the breakfast table, so he decided to keep quiet and not say anything.

There were the three younger adults,all of them about the age of the boys who would be moving out of Wool's on their own. One was called James, Son, Prongs or sometimes Jimmy, the other was Sirius or Also Our Son, Idiot, sometimes Padfoot as well. With these many names each, he guessed he was also expected to have a confusing variety, and consequently be too confused to talk about it. It hurt his pride to be considered stupid, but that was the way to go. It wasn't like he'd never wanted another name for himself, though.

The younger woman was Lily, Lils, or Hey Evans. She seemed to be the most reasonable about the inquisition for his name, telling the others to be patient and let him tell them what he wants to be called. Too bad, he didn't yet make up his mind for a new name.

After breakfast, he was shown the garden, and Mom / Euphemia spent the following hour showing him the various plants he had never seen before. For him, everything had been "grass" or "tree" but here it was shrivelfig, wand willow, ("See? Those are bowtuckles there!") fluxweed, knotgrass, asphodel, and dittany. There was a pond with a very strange looking creature in it.

"Don't go closer, he bites! That's what a grindylowdoes. But he also catches pixies, so he's very useful. You don't go near the pond, he won't go near you. Do you understand, child?"

He nodded. He was pretending to be mute, not stupid.

Eventually, the woman left him alone, and went to collect blossoms from one of the bushes. When she was done, she went inside, but he wasn't inclined to follow, so he just sat down in the grass and enjoyed the sunshine.

"You sssssmell new," he suddenly heard. Looking around, he spotted a green and blue string of an animal examining his right hand. The thing had a split tongue it waved at him before moving on. It was headed to the wand willow.

The boy looked around. There were no adults in sight, so maybe it was safe to talk? He was certain this was a snake, and it definitely wasn't a human adult, so it wouldn't take him back to the orphanage.

"Hi, ssssnake."

The thing he addressed turned its blue head around, red eyes glaring at the boy. The fork-shaped tongue was out too, waving in what could only be open curiosity.

"Did you ssssay hi, ssssmall man?"

"Assss I don't know your name I can't addressss you otherwisssse."

"I'm Sssspringsssscalesss," the snake offered. "Exssssstremely rare for a man to sssspeak parsssseltongue. Who were your teachersssss if I may asssssk?"

"Noone. I never met a sssssnake before. And I only arrived yesssssterday."

Springscales looked at him with those red eyes, examining him closely. "That issssss a real talent you have. Humansssss learn parsssseltongue in disssssssstant foressssstsssss, or ssssso I've been told. But I've never sssssseen one." The creature slid closer to the boy, watching him.

"Sssssince when do you live here?" he inquired.

"Ssssssseven yearsssss. Sssssssevenissss a magical number but I didn't exsssssspectto meet sssssomeoneasssss rare asssss youthisss year."

Was that a compliment?

"What isssss magic?" the boy asked.

Springscales gave him a very dubious look before sliding on a patch of grass next to him. "It issss a cardinal asssspect of life. Like water, like time, like food, like truth, like heat, like are richessss of life. Everything comes from thesssse living posssessses thesssse to variousssss degree."The snake paused, waving its tongue again. "You don't undersssstand."

"You didn't anssssswer me."

"There isssss no need. Jusssst remember the sssseven richesssss. Time, heat, food, magic, truth, love, 'sssss everything you ever need."

"I didn't undersssstand about half of that," the boy hissed with disappointment. What good was talking to a snake if she spoke nonsense?

"Because you're ssssso ssssssmall," Springscales replied. "You need more love, food, and much time. Truth, too."

The child gave another confused look. Springscales was the first creature he could really talk to; why did the snake have to be so complicated?

"Love and truth together are trussssst," the animal said, as if that explained anything. "Heat and food meanssss I go hunting. Sssssstay with thesssse people."

The blue and green snake moved on with an elegance and agility the child had never seen before. He had an impression that the animal had got bored with him.

He watched the other animals in the garden. Most of those he noticed would give some sound, but none of them was capable of talk. Why was that, he wondered. Springscales had said that speaking the snake language was a rare talent, so maybe there were other abilities, one for each type. He wished he could talk to birds just as easily, that would have been useful.

When he finally got bored with the garden, he moved back inside. Lily / Lils / Hey Evans was talking to the oldest two adults, something about time and founders. Hoping they would get the hint, he climbed into the chair at the table, and stared at them expectantly.

-?-

It was easy to settle into his new life with these adults. Hey Evans left after lunch that day, but the other four seemed permanent residents. The one who had found him, Idiot / Also Our Son / Padfoot, was quite a cheerful person, and he took him along for rides on what he fondly called his motorbike. Other times, Also Our Son was working on his vehicle, which often included him pointing his wand at various parts. The boy at least understood a fragment of what Springscales had been lecturing about: heat was meant to stay inside the bike, and whenever it came out in form of brilliant explosions, Idiot got very frustrated and said nonsensical words before casting a Reparo and beginning his work from scratch.

Son / James was a different type of person. He would read books and practice charms in the living-room, and resented Also Our Son for acting like a grown-up.

There were also two others who visited, one whom he instinctively decided to call Food, and the other who was very sickly-looking the first time they've met but got better after a good sleep. Truth described him pretty well. He also noticed that Truth and Idiot weren't on speaking terms, and he wished he could ask the details instead of waiting for the adults to drop them. Waiting was tiresome.

"Hi, small bundle!" Truth greeted him one day. "Do you still not talk?"

"Not unless you're a snake," Padfoot replied in his stead. "Looks like I'll have to be the one and learn that accursed language, if we are ever going to talk."

"Is that even possible?" Son asked.

"It's an elective at Castelobruxo," Food, also known as Peter or Wormtail, nodded.

"Do a favor and don't tell my past family."

"I have a better taste than to speak with them," Food murmured. He appeared insulted at the mere idea. "Anyway, you all have trusted me with something that can tell us the name of Padfoot's newfound responsibility."

He gave Food / Peter a murderous look. They could get his name? How was that even possible?

Food held out a large piece of parchment. "Here it is!"

The three others looked at Food dumbfounded.

"The map?!"

"What? My parents are regulars at the Three Broomsticks, from there, we only need to go to Honeydukes, and… don't give me that funny look, Moony! You won't rampage it this time!"

"You mean we sneak into school during summer…?" Prongs asked.

"Peter, I can't believe you're this smart!" Idiot exclaimed.

"Everybody keeps underestimating me!" the chubbiest adult replied. "Not that I would mind," he admitted, more quietly.

-?-

He wasterrified of being found out, but there wasn't much he could do against four grown-ups. He got properly bribed at Honeydukes, so he kept chewing his blood-flavored lollipopwhen a silky cloak was thrown on him and Padfoot, and they quietly slipped into the and Moony stayed back, eating their ways through the rest of the candy.

From the cellar, they moved to a dark corridor. It was dark and homey. Padfoot, without any warning, became a large black dog in the cast a Lumos and folded the cloak into his bag, then grabbed the child and put him on dog - Idiot's back.

"Hold tight, parsel-child," Prongs said before jogging away. The boy gripped the dog's wavy felt exactly like Idiot's wavy hair, and he was sitting quite comfortably. Padfoot took a few careful steps, then picked up Son's pace.

He had never ridden any living thing before, and Padfoot felt very different from his bike: he was quiet, and comfortable, and he didn't have the tendency to take off into the air at random occasions. That would have been quite unfortunate, as the ceiling was close enough as it was. So he enjoyed the ride and kept chewing the lollipop.

He couldn't tell how long they went into the corridor, following only Son's wand-light. The lollipop only lasted the first few hundred meters, but he couldn't complain. He kept his mouth shut, more out of habit than to prevent the discovery. He was already making backup plans: if he had to go back to the orphanage, he'd take Springscales with himself. With some little help from her, he was sure he would find his way to Diagon Alley. From there, he would take the Floo - he'd never used it before, but there's a first time for everything. He'd need to turn heat into magic, shout 'Potter Manor,' and he could return within a day.

Not exactly a flawless plan, he admitted to himself, but it was his best shot, and Springscales had always told him to be persistent.

…Well, the entire plan relied on Springscales.

In the soft darkness of the corridor, James suddenly came to a halt. Sirius rose back to his human form, which led to the child sliding down his back.

"Are we on the map already? James, what do you have there?"

"What do you have, more like. We should have made bets whether his family is wizarding or not."

"Quit teasing me now!" Idiot demanded. "I found him, I'm charged with him, now tell me his name!"

"If you wish," Prongs sighed, and handed over the parchment. "Not a name I recognize."

From behind Padfoot, the boy could only see straight lines on the parchment, and three tiny dots in one corner.

"From now on, you will recognize the name," Also Our Son replied. "Well, I'm pleased to finally get to know you, Messr Tom Marvolo Riddle."

He reached out his hand, and the child imitated the gesture awkwardly. After the handshake, Idiot knelt down. "It is August now. September, October. On the third of November I will reach adulthood, and from that day, your name will be Riddle-Black. And I don't care what my past family will think about it. Do you agree with the plan?"

Tom nodded, not letting his relief show.

-?-

They had his name. They could have sent him back. Instead, they took to calling him Our Tom, or Tommy the Treasure, in addition to the already established Parsel- Child. Idiot also addressed him "A Good Riddle" once or twice, but seeing how the boy didn't appreciate the pun, he grudgily gave up on it.

In fact, Also Our Son was the most sensible of the adults here. He wouldn't try to hug him or lift him up without a good reason, and neither did he insist to carry the boy on his back in dog form. Instead he took him along for rides on the motorbike and spent lengthy time explaining the various parts of his vehicle.

One week after his name's discovery, Tom and Padfoot were sitting together in the shed. The grown-up was, yet again, casting spells at what Tom now knew to be the oil tank. Padfoot had already explained him that the oil is what keeps the engine clean, but it gets tainted with use, so muggles need to change it once in a while. He was trying to enchant the oil to stay clean, but not at the cost of the lubricating function. Tom wasn't exactly sure if that made sense. Springscales, who was sunbathing on the windowsill, claimed Idiot had "gotten hissss name for a reassssson".

"Did she just make a flattering remark on me?"

Tom hissed the opposite of "yesss," which Padfoot now understood properly.

"Say yes," he requested with a put-upon insulted grimace.

Tom hissed the parseltongue word as requested, making it clear he was only fulfilling a request, not answering the previous question.

And, to his uttermost surprise, Padfoot hissed back.

His pronounciation was horrible (Tom only understood what he was trying to say because he was aware what that hiss was meant to be) but it was a first word nevertheless. The boy hissed the same word again, and Also Our Son repeated.

Springscales lifted her head, and advised Tom to encourage his oversize student.

The child agreed. He had been considering something akin for days now, so he looked Padfoot in the eye, and told him his exact opinion.

"Idiot!"

Padfoot picked him up, hugged him, rubbing his growing beard against the child's face.

"I only do that because I know you hate it," he explained. "Now apologize!"

"Idiot!"

Padfoot held him even closer. "Is that your last word? Say it again!"

Now was the time todistract the man.

"Bike!"

The adult put him down on the leather seat, laughing."Shall we go shopping? Or should it be the creek?"

Tom hissed the parseltongue word for water, which thus became the second word Sirius repeated after him. He got it right in a few tries.

"Yesss."

Also Our Son grinned proudly. He repeated the word (now with even more confidence), put the motorbike together with a wave of his wand, and sat behind Tom, holding the child safe between his arms.

"Bike!"

"For your information, kid, if anybody asks, that was your FIRST word, all right?"

Tom giggled. "Idiot!"

"I knew I cannot count on you."

"Bike!" Tom hastily corrected himself.

"Off we go!"

-?-

"Idiot!"

"Say my name. Padfoot."

"Idiot!"

"Give up, pal, he knows better than you."

"Son!" Tom said, pointing at the speaker.

Prongs burst out laughing."And Dad said he's not making progress!"

"He is teaching me hiss," Also Our Son shared. "In my entire past family, all those Slythertins were unable to learn more than three words. So far, I'm at five! This means 'yes', this is 'snake', this is 'garden', 'sleep well' is this, sounds easy but damn hard to pronounce, and 'creek' is this.

Tom hissed what could only be 'no', and threw a glass's contents at Idiot. Son only laughed at the scene.

"I guess it was supposed to mean 'water', I hope he didn't yet teach you 'fire whiskey'. But knowing your horrible influence on everybody in your reach, that won't be long…"

"Fire whiskey!" the four year old happily repeated. His own adult turned a bit white in the cheeks before growling, "Just look what you are teaching this poor kid, Messr Prongs!"

Tom frowned: he didn't like being called a poor kid, not even in this context. He crawled on the leather seat, and imperiously stated, "Bike!"

"I'm teaching?" Son rolled his eyes.

"Bike!"

Also Our Son stood up, and rested both his palms on the same seat, with the child between his arms.

"Listen, Tom. People need to work on other things, too. We can't just ride all day. Prongs here is in love with Lily, and it seems that, finally, he has a chance. That means we must help him in every way he does and doesn't ask."

"Bike?" the child tried again, but with much less determination. Also Our Son laughed.

"No, believe me, I we tried. The bike didn't have the desired effect when we kidnapped Lils with it. It kinda… didn't work, all right?"

"Bike." He let out a long series of hisses. Then, seeing the adults didn't get it, he tried again. "Bike Lils?"

"Why would we bike to Lily's place? She lives with her muggle parents, and with her sister, who is jealous of her magic and doesn't like anyone using it in her presence…"

"There's the idea, Padfoot!" Son sprung up. "We introduce Tom to that Petunia weed!"

Also Our Son's grin went wide. "All right, Tom, I'm in. We will have an early lunch, and then the three of us…"

"Bike!" the boy happily finished the sentence.

"Yes. But please Tom, no blasting up your vegetables this time. Save all your accidental magic for the afternoon."

"Accidental magic," the child nodded, knowingly.

"Yes, your magic. Prongs and I are not allowed to use ours when visiting muggles, but pre-schools are an exception from the rule."

"I can't believe my luck!" Son exclaimed. "This kid is a genius. Everywhere I read that if something mollifies a girl, it's a child. And now my dear Padfoot, you're holding the key to Lily's heart! Why didn't we think about this sooner?" With that, he bent down, and looked at the boy who was still sitting on Idiot's motorbike. "Do make sure you melt Lily's hear for me, all right?"

Uncertain for once, the child gazed at Also Our Son, as if asking for advice. "Idiot?"

-?-

The last two weeks of the summer went fast. After the merry havoc the four year old had unleashed on the two Evans girls and on Petunia's overly ambitious cavalier Vernon, after the horrified gazes of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad (with the reputation the Marauders had already held, Sirius being responsible for a child wasn't the omen of them peacefully sipping tea in the afternoons in the next thirteen years) and after getting a "maybe" from Hey Evans, James loudly announced that Tom was his favorite person in the not-Lily category. Fleamont agreed that Evans was a great girl and he would happily welcome her to the family. "She would bring some fresh blood to the old family tree," he said.

On the other side of the table, Mom / Euphemia was untying the Daily Prophet from the family's barn owl's leg.

"Oh, look, dear!" she exclaimed, seeing the front page. But before Fleamont could have got back to her from the teapot, she turned the paper to Idiot and his charge. It had a moving photograph of a girl with curly black hair. "Sirius, your cousin has been found! And it says she didn't age at all!"

"My cousi… WHAT?"

"Really, Mom, what?" Son joined Idiot in reading.

Of what Tom could understand of their incoherent and overly excited chatter, Idiot had something called a "cousin" that vanished before the time he was born, and theUnspeakables had claimed to have detected active time magic in their search. The cousin had been believed to be kidnapped (that word was explained as "human-stealing regardless of what age they are" by Padfoot) and now she had been found on a Hogwarts corridor justlike she had been at the time of her disappearance, five years old and wearing the exact same clothes,and holding her favorite plush scorpion that had vanished along with was doing well, although shocked to find her parents being twenty years older than what was, for her, yesterday.

Tom was getting jealous of her, stealing all the attention without being present in the room. He hated being ignored! Admittedly, however, he hated the other extreme even more, too much attention and suffocating hugs were just going to be the death of him.

"I want learn read," he announced.

He managed to get back about half of the attention.

"Now," he demanded, a bit louder, with more determination.

"All right," Idiot giggled. "It's not like the Prophet is good for anything else, trust me. They never get the important details. Euphemia, would you please pass us the sports page?"

-?-

The last day of August came so fast, and with the oncoming September, came a lot of packing and preparations for tearful goodbyes. Springscales informed Tom that it was always happening at this time of the year, and she was already losing appetite so the hibernation season was coming.

"Thingssss go quiet," she said. "Green goes brown. Shadowsss go cold. Trussssttime with them getting back to usssss…."

"Why?" Tom queried.

"Food, water, heat, magic, love, truth, time."

"You're not being helpful one bit," Tom hissed back, but the green-blue snake didn't bother to talk to him again.

"Tom?" another familiar voice addressed him.

"Yesssss?"

"I was talking to you in human."

"You understand anyway," Tom , Sirius did understand quite a lot by now, he was a fast learner and Tom prided himself in teaching his own adult.

"Do you fancy a last ride to the creek today? Tomorrow morning will be overly chaotic for a goodbye, and I want some quality time with you before I go."

Tom dusted himself off, and nodded. "I agree."

Padfoot grimaced, wondering where Tom might have picked up his attitude. He was on par with the Blacks.

"You will behave for Fleamont and Euphemia in my absence," Sirius quietly reminded / reprimanded him after he brought the motorbike out to the yard. Tom immediately took his seat.

"All right."

But Idiot knew him a bit too well by now."You only mean whatever you say when you speak in parseltongue."

"I promissssse I won't messss up their livessss," Tom obediently hissed. And he meant it: while they both tended to pick him up or hug him without a preamble, Fleamont had given his word to continue teaching him to read, and Euphemia was teaching him spells. In other word: they were important. And much, MUCH better than the orphanage.

"And I promise to return andformally adopt you literally as soon as I can." Sirius moved to sit behind him, holding him safe between his arms as they rolled out to the forest road. As soon as they were out of sight, they took off into the air.

The once green forest was slowly turning golden, red, and a million shades in between. Time, magic, heat, water, food, truth, the child recalled. He always tended to forget the last one, but in this moment, he could feel on his skin all the six he remembered, and indeed, they summed up to LIFE. Life on a flying motorbike above the autumn forest, with Also Our Son behind him, enjoying the last heat of summer. Sirius would go away, and would return on the third of Novemberto finalize the change. By ten o'clock that day, he would no longer be Tom Marvolo Riddle, the unwanted orphan. He would be a once-removed Marauder, and his name would be Tom Marvolo Riddle-Black.

It was more than all right with him.


	2. Chapter 2 The unforgettable years

Finders, keepers – The unforgettable years

"This way!"

"To the washing machines?"

Sirius Black, twenty-year-old wizard and adopted father of one, cast a rather dubious look at his adoptee. Young Riddle-Black nodded, enthusiastically like every eight-year-old on a mission, and only asked, "Will you teach me every enchantment you put on it?"

"You will know more spells when you enter Hogwarts than most wizards do when they graduate," the parent-figure nodded. For about ten seconds, he was looking very seriously.

"I don't want to be like most wizards," Tom said quietly, to which Black only hissed the Parseltongue expression for "I know." His language skills had improved greatly since fate (and a Responsibility Placement Ritual) had landed young Tom Marvolo Riddle in his path.

"I want to turn it into a Vanishing Cabinet," the kid explained as they were walking the muggle store's aisle. "A real Cabinet is just too obvious, and very prone to fire. In fact, that's how the Fiendfyre in 1666 spread through London, just when the wizards of the time thought they had put it out."

Sirius froze in the spot. "When have you read about the Fiendfyre of 1666, if I may ask?"

Young Tom went examining the washing machines on display, not bothering to answer until his adopter got really riled up. "Tom, I asked you a question!"

"You're shouting," Tom remarked, opening and closing the lid of a top loader. "Regulus was boasting about it on Wednesday. He said it could have been stopped much quicker if the wizarding populace hadn't been forced into hiding at the time."

"So you went to Fleamont and asked for a historically accurate source on the Fiendfyre." Then the older wizard muttered something about the kid getting spoiled.

"I know my way around the library," Tom huffed. He wasn't a small child anymore who couldn't take the book he needed.

Sirius let out an irritated sigh. "I knew we shouldn't have bought the Bagshot House. You just keep wandering back to the Potters."

Tom hissed delightedly, "They insssssisssted we buy the Bagshot Houssssse exsssactly becausssse now we bothssss can wander back to the Pottersssss."

"Tom, we're among muggles. No hissing."

"Okay." Tom gave the top-loader a last look, "What do you think about the lock? Could it be safely charmed so that it can't be opened from the inside?"

Sirius touched his very thin moustache. "That's not a detail I would have considered. But you're right, it's important."

"That's why you have me," Parsel-Child pointed out as a matter of fact. "And I like this rotary switch. Could be used for choosing more than one direction."

"You've already made a decision, I see," Padfoot murmured. "All right, go get a salesman and arrange home delivery."

"Okay."

Sirius stood idle as the child went and handled the muggle shop assistant. Tom had a talent for getting his will through without being prominently pushy or impolite. He just…. simply made the salesman drop everything else, ignore the other inquiring buyers, and rally to the home delivery desk. The more Sirius was watching the scene, the better he understood. Tom had control over that muggle, without either of them being aware of it.

But it wasn't just this muggle. Just two days before, they had met Regulus by chance, and young Riddle-Black talked the Black heir into having ice cream with them. The two brothers hadn't even talked since Sirius finished his NEWTs.

Regulus was doing well, for a pureblood. He had more than enough galleons and several investments Little Cor Leonis didn't even need to find a job, so, consequently, he had far too much free time on his hands. What troubled Sirius was what his younger brother was doing with his time. The Blood Purist Society was anything but a good influence on him.

In stark contrast to his brother, Sirius had his hands full. He hadn't even graduated when he had already developed a knack for customizing muggle inventions into something genially magical, and he also had young Tom to keep him on his toes at all times. Now he was the proud wizard behind Siriusly Enchanted Objects, a one-person business with special Ministry permit to work with muggle-made materials. He had sold maybe a dozen all-locks opening knives, each blade hand crafted by a muggle artisan, and each having a different extra, in accordance with the client's wishes and personality. He had customized the electric guitars for the Weird Sisters, who had paid him in concert tickets, and invited Tom along as well. Remus had requested a muzzle that would wrap on his werewolf form and stay in place exactly as long as the full moon was up, as an extra layer of security. It was disguised as a necklace with a basket medal for the rest of the month.

The Vanishing Cabinet (or, more like, Vanishing Washmachine) was for a very different line of products, however. The Purists carried on Grindelwald's legacy, thrived in terror and destruction, and the Auror Corps were tied by their own Ministry, unable to ever catch them. Sirius had heard James lament long enough about how the other departments were jointly thwarting them whenever a Purist came into view of an investigation. Muggleborns, half-bloods and their families had to fend for themselves against a pack of witches and wizards who stood above the law. Creating escape routes for them was Sirius' contribution to their protection.

"Is there a ward that can disable a Vanishing Cabinet? Or anything that works on the same principle?" Tom had asked when his own adult had first met the problem. And now, here they were, buying washing machines to serve as a muggle family's escape route in case the Purists terrorized them.

Sirius paid for the to-be Vanishing Washmachine, and moved on with Tom to the other electronics store on the far side of the shopping mall, to buy the exact same model. It would be easier to connect them. Yet again, he had to admit Tom's choice was smart. Vanishing Cabinets had to be built at the same time, and the maker had to go a long way to ensure they were similar. The same level of similarity, however, was given for certain with mass produced muggle goods. And why wouldn't he make a trio of them, instead of just a pair? There were enough buttons with which one could choose the destination. Floo was unsafe because the leaving wizard had to clearly pronounce his place of arrival, which was as good as telling the attackers in the face where they could continue.

"Tom, we'll come back here tomorrow with Glamour, and get two more of these."

"May I cast it on you?"

"Absolutely not! I won't walk LONDON with green-blue hair like what you've put on me last time!"

"It looks well on Springscales!"

"There's the point, Parsel-Child, I'm not Springscales! I am male, to start with the most important difference!"

-?-

Something was off, Tom could tell it, something other than the wedding preparations. It felt like half of the population of Godric's Hollow was busy with Lily Evans soon taking the name Lily Potter, but that was a good thing, and whatever was wrong, felt like something bad. Bathilda, who had sold her childhood home to Padfoot several years before, was staying at a muggle neighbor just across the street. Tom had the strange feeling that she somehow wanted her own place back, like a ghost returning to a building, and this really made no sense to the boy, because Bathilda was, beyond any doubt, alive. Tom still didn't want to see her in what was Padfoot's and his home now.

Young Riddle-Black locked his door behind himself, dropped on the bed in his street clothes, and picked up the book from under his pillow. He didn't care it wasn't meant for young children. A year before, Padfoot had picked up a liking to Asimov's science fiction, which Tom had moderately enjoyed, but as soon as he had heard the same author had books of science without fiction, he had started collecting those obsessively. 'The Left Hand of the Electron' explained, for example, through dextrorotatory glucose and levorotatory fructose, why some potions need to be stirred clockwise and some counter-clockwise, without breaching the Statute of Secrecy. But today, not even that book could hold his attention for long.

He looked up from his read and out at the inky sky, and he wondered if he had been forgotten by the adults. Or, if he had cast a repellent charm on his door again without thinking about it.

He really wasn't in control of his own magic, sometimes.

In the living-room, he found Padfoot working on the two identical washing machines, or vanishing machines, or whatever he was going to name the invention.

"Idiot."

The wizard hissed back a greeting.

"Why didn't we have lunch with Fleamont and Euphemia?"

Sirius stood up, and quietly stated, "They've been feeling unwell in the past few days. And they have a lot of difficult things to sort through this week."

"And you are soaked in bubbles," the child observed. "Why are they feeling unwell?"

"If I knew, I would tell you, I swear."

"Are they afraid Son will move out? After the wedding, I mean."

Padfoot only grimaced. "Prongs is training to be an auror, Tom. That means he doesn't get to spend much time at home, be it with them or with Lily."

"He's been training for two years by now," Tom pointed out. "Nothing changes there." And there also wasn't any change in his well-earned disrespect for his superiors, but Tom didn't voice that this time.

Sirius nodded. "Lily herself requested that they get a separate wing in the Potter manor, instead of moving completely out. That's not going to change in the near future. On the long run… No, they won't be moving." Sirius took a deeper breath, and continued. "Both Euphemia and Fleamont are old. We love them, and they will stay with us forever, just…" He scratched his neck with the hilt of his wand. Clearly, he was out of ideas how to explain something.

Tom sat down with a jug of hot cocoa. "We talked about death with Springscales," he started, his face pale, and his voice low tuned. "She says it will be like molting out of the entire body," he shared quietly. "That it will be the opposite of hatching out of an egg. But when I asked, she couldn't tell what comes later. Only, that it does."

Sirius took the seat next to the boy, and took a mug of cocoa for himself. "Thank Merlin for wise snakes," he smiled faintly. "But James's parents are not dying," he clarified. "They are old and they are more prone to a number of illnesses, but at the moment, they are with us and they are going to attend the wedding."

"But they are preparing for a time when it won't be so," Tom pointed out.

"Yes." With relief, Sirius continued. "They're at Gringotts, taking account of everything James will inherit one day. See, if James would die now, his properties would be passed on to distant Potter relatives, but after getting married, everything would fall to Lily. Who is muggle-born, and our Ministry doesn't like muggleborns."

"You mean, Ministry gits would just get their bloody hands on all that should be Lily's."

"Language."

"Minissssstry gitssss want to disssssposssssesssss Lily if her husssssband diesssss."

Sirius rolled his eyes. When he said 'language', he didn't mean switching to Parseltongue. Of which Tom was doubtlessly aware. With a tiny nod, he turned back to his own cocoa, and downed it in one go.

"I still don't like what the Ministry is doing," Tom finally stated.

"You're not alone with that," Sirius agreed. Why did James insist on getting the most dangerous job the wizarding world could offer? Apart from his disability to sit still when there was a hope for adventure…?

-?-

The vanishing machines were yet another hit, and one evening Sirius found himself in Albus Dumbledore's office, writing down the list of spells he was using to create the magical connection between the latest two.

"You are saving lives, my boy," the headmaster reassured him.

"Too bad there's a need for it," Padfoot replied. "I'd much rather be discussing spellfire polarity with Tom."

Albus blinked twice, not quite sure what spellfire polarity might be. So he took the discussion in the other direction. "An exceptional child, or so I've heard."

"You won't like him. Slytherin to the core," Sirius grinned. A Slytherin who had him wrapped around his fingers the night they've met.

"Oh."

Sirius gave a warning look before he continued his work. In three years, his adopted son would start his studies at Hogwarts, and it would be the end of all good terms with the headmaster if just once his well-known dislike of Slytherins would put Tom at any disadvantage.

"At least Horace will be happy," the old wizard managed.

Sirius finished the list he was writing, ran through it again, then handed the scroll over to Albus.

"Here. Make sure to first send an apple through it. If the apple arrives, anything else will also come through. Security spells must be discussed with those who will use it, see, blocking the exit would somewhat miss the entire point."

Dumbledore took the parchment, and read it through. "A modified expansion charm?" he noted. "Makes sense."

"In an emergency, you won't have time to squeeze yourself into the expanded space. Tom tested this one by driving my motorbike into a front-loader at full throttle. I almost had a heart attack!"

"You weren't entertained? My boy, you clearly never had an entire school to watch."

-?-

When James and Lily returned from their honeymoons, it was Sirius and Tom's turn to leave for two weeks on the Continent. They visited a dragon sanctuary, various muggle-made sights, vast plains and forest-covered large mountains, caves that would only let them past if they blocked the exits behind their backs. Tom insisted on seeing Nurmengard, even if they couldn't get close because of the numerous security spells. Somewhere up that cloudy mountain peak, Sirius explained, Gellert Grindelwald was still alive.

"I wonder what he's doing right now," Tom said, nibbling a sandwich on a salient.

"Reading the freshest issue of Transfiguration Today, if I know Albus one bit."

"You mean they're in correspondence?" Tom asked. Suddenly, his esteem of the old headmaster tripled, at least. "Why, is he..?"

"They were friends, great friends once." Sirius glared at his flask of pumpkin juice, but he couldn't take anything more alcoholic when they still had to fly back through weaker layers of the isolation shield.

Tom stared. "Really?"

"Planning to change the world together, or so I remember Albus telling about it. He still couldn't bring himself to destroy Grindelwald in 1945, no matter that they were, by then, mortal enemies."

Tom kept looking up at Nurmengard, chewing his sandwich mechanically. Being ultimately defeated by someone who was as close to him as, say, the Marauders to each other… Those shared the tightest bond he had ever seen. He wondered if Sirius had feared a similar result of their fallout when he had given up Moony's secret just for an ill thought-out prank. Lucky for the adequately named Idiot, Tom had entered his life, stirring it up enough that Padfoot's treason became old news for his friends. Not that he had much recollection of the time of his arrival, but he'd heard the story retold several times. He looked at Sirius (still in a deadly staring match with the innocent flask of juice) then at the fortress in the clouds.

It started raining soon after that, and Sirius decided they'd been here long enough. "Come, Parsel-Child."

"Will we come back?"

"One day, possibly."

So Sirius didn't intend to. Well, Tom though, if any of them would ever turn against the other, this will be the spot where they would discuss the situation. Here, with the never-forgotten fortress above their heads, warning them where a conflict can lead to.

-?-

Tom was maybe closer to nine than to eight by now, without his birth documents it was impossible to tell. He was clearly still underage to buy a wand in the Wizarding Britain, where the Ollivander family had been supplying the entire nation for centuries. On their tour, however, it took Tom one well-timed disappearance with all the pocket money he had saved, and he returned in half an hour with a Gregorovitch wand, 28 cm (11 inch) aspen, with a right-wing pinion of a turul hawk as the core.

-?-

They were scheduled to cross the Great Muggle-Made Barrier in two days, a wall-like apparation block that cut the continent apart. Tom heard it said, the muggle politicians on both sides were so engaged in the idea of splitting their world in half, they convinced their wizarding counterparts to add magical enforcement to the obstacle they had created for themselves. The International Confederation of Wizards concurred, because leaving the opportunity for magical transportation would have encouraged an unwanted amount of wizard-muggle interaction. However, borderlines between magical governments' territories couldn't be expected to follow the muggle-drawn line, and the Transsylvanian vampire population threatened with breaching the borderline in broad daylight if they would have been cut off from their manors in France, so the so-called Muggle-Made Barrier had been, eventually, cast several hundred miles from the Iron Curtain it was supposed to follow.

"That doesn't make sense," Tom noted.

"After four years in the wizarding world, you doubt our capacity for complete idiotism?"

"No, but vampires couldn't have really done ANYTHING in broad daylight," the child pointed out. "If that was the threat they made, they were threatening everyone with their en masse suicide."

Sirius scratched his head. Honestly, he never considered that….

They were just arranging paperwork at the wizarding check-point, when James Potter's owl found them.

Sirius's fingers paled as he took a first glance at the letter. Tom didn't wait for him to read it aloud, he just leaned over his adult's shoulder.

"There's a growing epidemic of dragon pox in Godric's Hollow," the message read without a preamble. "As always, taking its toll on the elderly. We already lost old dear Mary Longbottom, and it's spreading fast. Padfoot, Parsel-kid, you might need to hurry back if you want to say goodbye to Dad and Mom."

The two Blacks wasted no time to travel back to Britain.

-?-

Just a week later, Fleamont succumbed to his sickness. Euphemia only survived her husband by two days. She was smiling on her deathbed, and told James not to let Lily come close to either of them. When she was asked why, her reply was, "It's a boy."


	3. Chapter 3 Decisions we make

Finders, keepers – Decisions We Make

Tom Marvolo Riddle-Black was staring at the white curtain separating his current bed from that of a second-year Rawenclaw boy, and tried to gather his thoughts. The foul smell of several potions he had had to take, as well as the reason he had to take them in the first place, didn't agree with composing a letter to his adopted parent.

He had given his word, to all the Marauders in fact, that he would not try to break their records of detention, be it the duration or the number or the speed to gather one. And he really didn't. He ended up in the Infirmary instead, with three broken ribs, a knot-tying curse on his bowels, a concussion, a nose-bleeding hex, and too many bruises to count. And the castle that was housing him didn't fare much better.

He had been a target of constant brickering (and some more serious, not always verbal insults) from his fellow Slytherins, but this wasn't the problem. He ignored most of the attacks, calmly pointing out that the House was not taking 'mudbloods', so he couldn't be one. Having been raised by Sirius Black and trained in duelling ever since he had bought his own wand of aspen wood with turul pinion, at the age of nine, he was quite adept at protecting himself. His travel trunk at the side of his bed had been charmed to only open to an all-locks picking knife, of which Sirius had only created a dozen, and Tom has carried the seventh of those on himself all the time. Once a fourth-year had sneaked into the first-years' dormitory to take his frustration out on the bed curtains. Later that night he had been dumped into the common room, wrapped into a bundle by the violated fabric. After loudly asking if anyone wanted further humiliation at the hands of a mudblood, the attacks against his person had ceased.

What irked him still, was being called 'mudblood' just because that was the worst insult his house-mates could think of. Him being Sorted into Slytherin should have been a dead giveaway that he had at least one magical parent, even if the person had been unknown. There simply was no proof that he wasn't a descendant of Merlin himself. On the other hand, he guessed his positivist approach was the result of reading too many books on muggle science, a privilege these wizard-raised gits never had. They knew their pedigree back to the Celtic times, but they were never told the difference between a solid proof and a mistaken opinion. Which led Tom wonder if their pedigrees had any 'retroactively corrected truth' in them. It was just suspiciously convenient that everyone in thirty generations had married someone of their social standing and none of these betrothed couples had cursed each other to death before the first heir was born.

With aching hands, Tom reached for the quick-quotes quill he used in most of his classes. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have written a letter to Sirius with it, but his elbow was still aching and he couldn't quite hold a proper quill yet. He had to explain how he landed himself in the Infirmary on his third day of school. His quill easily wrote the address on the parchment, but then it stayed, levitating, above the sheet.

Now came the hardest part. Compiling a report, even if he wasn't expected to go into as much detail as James / Son / Auror Potter / Prongs was ought to in his job. And after just two lines, Tom was certain he would never fit the requirements of that carrier.

He managed a summary on how he had found a group of fourth-year Slytherins practicing the curses they had read about in their Defense Against Dark Arts schoolbook. The target of their curses was a Rawenclaw boy who got separated from his own housemates. Tom couldn't help but inject a question: were the children of the blue house this much incapable of cooperation? So far he had only seen individualists without a talent of team work. Each of them had seemed more concerned with their own, personal goals instead of working together. Slytherins, at least, most of them, would show a united front to the outside.

He was expected to be a part of said 'united front'. He was expected to join the bullying gang. Instead, he allowed his upbringing get the better of him, eventually landing everyone involved in the Infirmary.

Tom only got so far with the letter when the Heads of the two involved houses entered, accompanied by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Of the three, the long-bearded wizard caught young Riddle-Black's attention. He was standing seemingly calm as Horace Slughorn rushed to his little bandits and the tiny Filius Flitwick went to ensure his boy was safe.

"Professor?"

"Tom, my boy. I hear you had a blast of magic in the fourth floor of the Eastern Wing. You will have to learn to keep better control of your powers, strong as they may be." One could say he was suspicious and disapproving of a child who reportedly crashed the floor in three meter radius, especially since he knew the boy was well experienced in spell casting already. Black and Potter had quite that sort of influence. "What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that if four people attack a single second-year in the safest place of the magical world, the portraits and ghosts would get help and I only need to buy him some time." Tom sighed, blinking at his own empty flask of Skele-Gro. "From the outside, I understand it looked like being ambitious."

"There were no paintings on that part of the corridor, only windows and cupboards," Albus pointed out.

Tom nodded. Of course, those who had the advantage of being here for years must have been aware of that detail. "Do you understand Horace will have to dock hundreds of points for that stunt from your house? Minerva is accessing the damage you caused as we talk. The parents of the children you attacked might even try and get you expelled."

Tom couldn't tell how little he cared about house points (so what? Will the others suddenly start to hate him?) but the mention of expelling someone from school reminded him of the detail the headmaster hadn't yet accessed.

"I caused the floor to collapse under us, I won't deny that, Professor," he said in the tiniest voice. "I admit I had previous training that enabled me to do so. I understand that this automatically means it's my fault."

"It is your fault, my boy. You did what you are capable of, and you acted on it irresponsibly."

"I heard you are a legilimens, Professor," Tom said in the same tiny voice. Sirius would have got suspicious by now, but this old man quite certainly wasn't him. "You can read other people's minds, sir. Thoughts, memories, the spells that activate or deactivate their escape routes from their own homes." Yes, Sirius would have gotten definitely suspicious by now. Even Peter. And Son? Oh, Auror Potter wouldn't have gotten into this situation, he tended to ask what had happened right after shielding off the immediate danger.

"Yes, I am. But Legilimency is just an ability, I would never let it define me or control my deeds. A person is to be judged by his actions, the decisions he makes."

Tom gave a very honest huff of disbelief, but didn't speak a word.

"I am a legilimens, Tom, but that doesn't mean I act on it. Not without a good reason, my boy."

"Is my permission reason enough?" Tom whispered, still in that same voice, and he looked Dumbledore straight in the face. No, he was initiating eye contact. Inviting the older man to see straight into his head.

Realizing that the child had quite possibly trusted him to be his solicitor, and also realizing he was unable to back out of that position right now, Albus pointed his wand at the young wizard's head, and dove into his mind.

And, from this close, Tom could see the old man pale until his skin was as white as his beard.

"Tom. Tom, that… I cannot even comprehend. I don't know what to say."

"That you will not just dock hundreds of points from Slytherin," Tom guessed, turning his gaze to the curtains, behind which his four older housemates were discussing the events with Professor Slughorn.

"Tom, it is… May I sit down here, my boy?"

Tom put away the half-written letter, and tried to sit up. His mending bones were aching all over – even with Skele-Gro and numerous pain potions, it was not a nice feeling when freshly broken bones were fusing back together. He had also taken a number of hexes and curses before casting the Undetectable Expansion Charm on one too many cracks on the floor. His intention had been to trap one of the attackers in a hole that's too deep on the inside, but they hadn't moved from where they had been standing, so the trick hadn't worked. But, as a result, the collapsing footing caught him just as surprised as everyone else involved.

He ached all over.

"Lemon drops?"

"Just one, please." He finally moved away enough to make space on his bed, and looked at his headmaster attentively.

"You know, Tom, Hogwarts was founded well before the Ministry of Magic, or the Auror Corps. Legislation at the time was shared with muggles, who had little concept of the most horrible curses of the time. As a result, it was stated in the Foundation Act, and agreed on by all four Founders, that no outer authority can directly influence jurisdiction at Hogwarts if the culprit is underage. This was reinforced at least thirteen times, that I know of, on occasions when the Ministry refused to properly investigate, or when the child really didn't have control over what she was doing. And, there were some cases when the father was the Minister of Magic himself." He took a moment to breathe, and Tom spoke immediately.

"So, what if somebody gets killed? Not just a student, but a teacher? Is that all right with you? You call it Hogwarts authority and dock points?"

The headmaster only sighed. He didn't want to talk about precedents that were emitted from the all-time editions of Hogwarts: A History.

Muffled noises seeped through from the other side of the curtains. The words were mixed to a gibberish sound by the patient-privacy spells, but it was clear Professor Slughorn was in a heated argument with his fourth-year charges. From the other direction, the tiny Professor Flitwick emerged, several shades paler than when he held their first Charms class.

"Albus, do you know why young Riddle-Black was compelled to interfere?"

Now that was a good question. Tom wasn't sure of the answer himself. Perhaps it was a bout of grandeur, or plain stupidity inflicted on him by his adoptive Idiot. He preferred to call it ambition, though.

The short professor gave a respectful bow, as it is becoming to a master duelist. "Thank you, in the name of my House and my School, Mr Riddle." With that, the small one turned to the headmaster. "The only reason Rose Macnair didn't kill either of them is that she couldn't properly recite the spell! Their lives were saved because of the too long incantation!"

"And because the other two curses they were using are both so heavily intent-based that I didn't catch their attention with anything short of a Slug-Eater hex."

Professor Flitwick stared at the young pupil. Tom realized too late that he might have said too much.

"Auror James Potter's nephew," Dumbledore explained, as if introducing the child just now. A friendly twinkle could also be spotted in his eyes.

"Well, that explains all," the short professor nodded. "So it appears, Mr Riddle, you not only did what was right, but you knew what you were standing against. My sincerest respect," he nodded.

"Thank you, Professor Flitwick. But please, I'm Riddle-Black."

The Head of Rawenclaw was forming a polite reply to that when a quiet, but very distressed moan was heard from the other curtain's direction, and Poppy Pomfrey rushed to the second-year boy.

"I will talk to Horace when he emerges from his snakes," Albus stood up, and Flitwick seemed to be leaving as well.

Snakes? Tom had sometimes heard that word as an insult, always used in reference to Padfoot's past family. But these were no Blacks, at least not directly from that line. And why call these fourth-years snakes? They were not wise, nor cautious, but they were rather dull and lacking any planning-ahead. How did anyone have the guts to use such word?

These were four examples of shame, not snakes.

Tom evaluated what he had learnt in these few days so far. Slytherins could be won over with patience, and a lot of fight. He could prove himself. But what would he gain? The support of nitwits? On the other hand, Rawenclaws were plain unable to form strong units. They were an inspiring environment, but not company.

Since when did he need company?

Stirring before he would have re-taken his former comfortable position, Tom spoke up. "Professor Flitwick, could I have a word please?"

The headmaster excused himself, and went to grab Horace Slughorn for some serious discussion. At least, that was Tom's best guess.

"Yes, Tom. What do you want?" From this close, the Charms professor really looked like he had goblin blood in him.

"To be a Rawenclaw," Tom replied bluntly. "I came to this school to learn, but only your house seems to be really inclined on that one aspect. Is there any way I could join them, sir?"

Flitwick blinked in confusion. An unusual request, although not an unprecedented one. "Mr Riddle… Black, you are the most Slytherin person I have met in my life. You are cunning, ambitious, not to say, manipulative…" He didn't know how to continue.

"That is exactly why I will never feel at home with people who can't see further than their own pedigree. I'm not saying they won't think forward, as most will never think at all. They are a mirror of Gryffindor," Tom reasoned, remembering that old book he had read about left and right versions of the exact same thing. "They're only educated in intrigues, while some of them repel science like how an augurey's feather repels ink. Slytherin has become the dumping ground of purebloods who aren't brave, or reliable, or smart. I don't want to be any braver than I already am, Professor. And Hufflepuff is just…. not me."

Flitwick cast an engorging spell on a tile, making it grow under his feet, until he was on the sitting boy's eye level. And he was smiling. "Give it a good night's sleep, Mr Riddle-Black. If that's still your opinion in the morning, I will talk to the headmaster."

"When you do, sir, please tell him that my abilities are Slytherin, but my decision is Rawenclaw. He will get the reference."

At this, the tiny teacher quirked a smile. "You already got that lecture about what defines us?" Tom nodded with a frown. "Lemon drops?" Another nod. "Kid, he will be very disappointed that you didn't choose Gryffindor."

-?-

Rawenclaw House had its dormitory in one of the highest towers, which meant that an exhausted (or full to the brim) student had to climb almost three hundred steps of staircases. If that was a smart idea, Tom refused to know what a stupid one was.

As it was expected, he was ignored more often than not. He was a good student, but that applied to every Rawenclaw, even if they fought over rare books once in a while, or had friendship-ending arguments over magical theory. Tom didn't think he will ever understand why people refuse to talk to each other after one earning more house-points than the other.

His situation with the House he had been Sorted into was just as hostile as before, but the teachers no longer viewed it as an in-House matter. When the situation was repeated with a third-year Hufflepuff as the target of a bleeding-inducing potion, Tom made sure to call the Fat Friar first, and only then did he make the next vial explode in the second-year attacker's hands. The ghosts and portraits did manage to fetch an adult this time (an agitated Madame Pince, who had been informed of what books were getting soaked in the pupil's blood) and so, a second case of collapsing floor was successfully avoided. Tom watched with a mixture of shock and awe and terror as the Hogwarts librarian put the Slytherin girl back in her place. She even cast a rapid-rust hex on her favorite dagger, which made the youngest Miss Black screetch at the top of her lungs.

"What a music!" Peeves joined the mess, of which Tom wisely decided to keep out of. "Almost like her auntie! Too bad you will never become a poltergeist, Baby Belly! You are just not a proper poltergeist material!"

The girl with extremely black and extremely curly hair cast a complicated jinx at Peeves, who then complained she was tickling him. The next curse passed his non-physical body, and turned the wall brown and smelly behind the cheeky phenomenon. The poltergeist laughed, and floated away in the other direction.

Miss Belly had to scrub the entire wall surface clean in the next few evenings.

Tom still giggled at the memory several years later, when they were having Ancient Runes class on the other side of that suddenly infamous wall.

-?-

Charms easily became Tom's favorite, and not only because of Flitwick. Potions was only about following instructions, that really wasn't his style – once he memorized the theory, practice was simply dull. Transfiguration was the opposite, an incredible effort put into horribly meaningless deeds. Who would need an inkwell fashioned out of black tulip petals, when every adult witch or wizard was using self-inking quills, or their muggle versions? But after an accident with the second years and some drama queen mandrake, he understood the value of turning pebbles into planting pots as quickly as doable, although he doubted many of his year would be working with mandrakes for a living. And one could always just cast a silencing charm.

Broom flying, a subject only taught to first-years, was definitely his least favorite. His instincts urged him to stay close to the ground, and he couldn't bring himself to trust an old school broom with his life. Of all his carrier options, Quidditch star was easily crossed out. Both History of Magic and Defence irked him, two topics that could have been interesting if not for the boring teachers. At least he found a challenge in getting Binns to reply to his questions, of which he always had an entire set.

After yet another lesson of "Most Boring Facts about Least Interesting Wizards", as his new House tended to call History, and after yet another round of Slytherins attacking him (and getting slightly scorched for their troubles), he headed for the library. Binns had practically skipped Merlin, the one and only favorite of the entire Wizarding Britain, in favor of some obscure witch who had invented a potion that muggles subsequently stole from her (how could have anyone stolen SEVEN ENTIRE CAULDRONS of that concoction?) and used that for covering their enemies' army in fog (didn't a sentinel notice the rapid change in visibility and alert the entire camp at once? On more than three occasions?) resulting in the British Isles being the foggiest place in the world to this day. (Wrong. The foggiest place is the Dementor Bay of Neverseen Island between Greenland and New Foundland. It can only be studied through far-scrying, for noone who ever ventured close was in the state to tell about the area afterwards.)

Madam Pince was attached to the books under her care in a clearly unhealthy obsession, which stemmed a number of speculation. His first-ever rescue, the lanky boy one year older than him, provided a list of wild theories. Some said she was a shapeshifter and outside her realm, she only would exist in a different form, perhaps that of Argus Filch. Others said her own children had been trapped in a dangerous book now in the Restricted Section, hence her fierce protectiveness. There were whispers about a curse on her that normally keeps ghosts inside specific places, and wraith-banishing specialists were visiting Hogwarts from abroad for time to time to study this extremely unique phenomenon, as she was, without an ounce of doubt, alive.

"You should write a book about her, it would sell better than the Prophet," Tom murmured as they skipped the trap stair together.

"It surely would have more truth to it than the news pages," the tall, slim boy replied. "Have you seen what they made of the Blood Purist attack on the Prewetts? They were targeted simply because they tried to keep in touch with their squib brother, they even received death threats by owl, and now the Minister of Magic tells the Prophet the house went off because they were trying to work some muggle monstrosity. A matching wash-in, or what."

Tom froze to the spot. "A washing machine?!"

"Is that the box what muggles use for cleaning their robes?"

"Yes. Is that what went off?"

The lean boy frowned. "What's wrong with you, Tom? You're mad like a Gryffindor!"

"Yes I am! Where's that Prophet?"

The other boy rubbed his temple. "On my pillow, or maybe just on my trunk if Mark didn't put it back on the bed again. What got you, seriously?"

"Exactly that! Quir, would you do me a favor?" The tall boy nodded. "Thanks. Here are my questions from History. Could you please try and get answers to them?"

"Sure, Tom, but why…" The lanky boy glanced in the direction of the library, then at his first-year friend. He'd never seen Tom this agitated before.

In a haste, and clearly not in the mood for explaining, Riddle-Black simply exclaimed, "I knew I can count on you!"

With that, he rushed to the staircase on the far end of the corridor, then up to the Rawenclaw tower. The boy whom the Slytherins once used as target practice quickly moved to the library, not waiting for a second serving of those curses. Only once he was in the safety of Pince's realm did he take a look at Tom's parchment.

'Why is there no accurate record of Merlin's birth?' the list started. 'Why do Slyths boast about him being in Slytherin, when there's no record of him in the book of the school? (Unless he was an extremely mediocre student, which I won't eat?)' The tall boy shrugged, and read on. 'List of contemporaries. List of King Arthur's contemporaries. List and correct date of their battles, co-reference with muggle history records.' All these were listed in neat handwriting, on an average sheet of parchment, something that others used for sketching dragons on. The tall boy couldn't understand – if Tom was so eager for knowledge, why had the Sorting Hat placed him in Slytherin?

He reminded himself with a grimace, that only a Rawenclaw would ask such meaningless questions. Any other wizard in his shoes would simply be glad that Riddle-Black was now in the House matching his needs.

-?-

"The Sorting Hat said it was waiting for me for a long time, before promptly putting me in Slytherin," Tom said, pulling his legs up in an armchair, as if coiling up. "I had no time to ask what it meant. But most certainly, I'm a claustrophile. Coincidentally, so is my favorite author."

"You mean, claustrophobic," a fourth-year corrected him.

"No, that's the opposite," Tom explained. "A claustrophile is who values a homely, quiet, secure den without distractions. The Slytherin dorms were built like that, but now they are full with boasting egos. Imagine a snake den, inhabited by songbirds."

"So you don't like it here?"

"I greatly appreciate the company," Tom replied, because he knew an honest answer would only meet disapproval. Here he felt exposed all the time, and having to climb the stairs four times a day just added to his discomfort. "And you're not talking thestral dung like Merlin having been in Hogwarts."

His lanky friend nodded. "It's a very Slytherin thing to spread such rumors."

"And a very Hufflepuff thing not to point at them, laughing."

Somebody giggled in the background. "I dated a Puff boy for two years, I agree, they're like that!"

"What's wrong with Merlin being in Slytherin?" a girl of Tom's year queried. "It's stated in Hogwarts: a History!"

Tom only blinked at his tall protégé, prompting him to share his findings. Which he eagerly did. "There are no records of Merlin's birth, and I couldn't even find a reliable pointer about his known contemporaries. After Hogwarts was founded, every wizard and witch birth was registered in the Great Book. So, unless he was born abroad, which would equal to saying he's not who we are told he is, he was born before the first ever class of Hogwarts. I even owled my aunt's muggle brother-in-law, who works as a historitian in Oxford. He sent me a bunch of photocopies from muggle books, and it appears Merlin lived in either sixth or eighth century."

"What's a pot-o-copy?" another first-year asked.

"Somebody please educate the pureblood!" the fifth-year prefect yelled, much to everyone's delight.

"I can show you," the lanky friend offered. Tom stayed, curled up in the armchair as if in a nest, and when the other boy arrived with copied pages from old books, he grabbed one random sheet and pulled it closer.

Well, it was embarrassing that the most important wizard in history was better researched by muggles than by his own kind. And when he considered that all this might have been a result of a Slytherin plot to thwart anyone questioning their stupid claim, and couldn't suppress his shame and disdain.

-?-

"Professor Flitwick? Could I please…"

"Let me fold those essays, and…. Now. What is it, Tom? I heard you had a disagreement with Professor Warren, do you need a hand there?"

"No, sir, I can shake her short-sightedness off, thank you. But I was reading about some long-ago wizard, and there was a possibility mentioned that he was a cambion, so I read up cambions, and… I think the description matches me. Every time somebody talks about love I just feel an outsider, I have an affinity to Dark Arts as long as it's not Warren teaching about them, I feel attached to old objects that have been in use long before I was born. I hate bodily contact, and I think I only tolerate it this much because Euphemia desensitized me. Yesterday Haley was showing off her Amortentia-infused scarf, and while everybody was sharing what its smell reminded them of, my nose just blanked out so much that I couldn't even smell the garlic sauce at dinner."

"And now you're wondering if being a cambion makes you a monster?"

"Am I a cambion, Professor?"

The tiny teacher gave him a scrutinizing look. "I wish I knew. Do you remember your blood family?"

"Not a thing. All I remember… I… I… The lack of one."

Filius Flitwick conjured a ribbon over the pile of parchments, and rubbed his forehead.

"Maybe. Professor, was there anyone called Riddle in this school before me? It sounds like an English name, so maybe…"

"No. Not here, nor at Ilvermorny, nor Salem. I asked around when you moved in."

"Thank you, Professor." He couldn't suppress his disappointment, he just hoped it didn't show. And Flitwick was looking forward to lunch just as well, so holding him for much longer wasn't a good idea. It didn't promise fruitful, either.

"Mr Riddle-Black?"

"Professor?"

"I have no idea what you are. But if you're a cambion, then I'm proud to be the teacher of one."

-?-

Weeks went fast. Sirius made a point of keeping owl contact, but otherwise busied himself with securing the Vanishing Machine network that became the new target of the Blood Purist Society. Peter, the rat, was working as a full time spy, gathering information and collecting wands on every meeting the Purists held. James, the auror, was following the slightly more legal, but also, slower and more dangerous way of rounding up the criminal circle. Officially, Lily was still on maternity leave, but now that Harry was over three years old, she had enough time on her hands and she spent hours every day securing the homes of less talented witches and wizards.

They were all targets, they knew. Regulus himself, Padfoot's estranged brother and Heir of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black, had sent them a message by his old family elf. Sirius accurately concluded that receiving the warning prove that at least Kreacher could get past the defences. They needed to fortify their own wards.

For other children, Halloween meant a school feast, and for Gryffindors, also marked the death day of their House's ghost. But Tom pointed out that he was no Gryffindor, and his own two school houses' ghosts didn't celebrate their death days especially because they died on the same day; and when he got wind of Remus finally returning from Peru, he stole one of the school thestrals, adamant on celebrating Samhain with his family.

"Parsel-Child, you reckless thing! Couldn't you wait for Padfoot to pick you up?" James greeted him as soon as his ride landed in Godric's Hollow. "And riding a thestral, of all things! Doesn't the Statute of Secrecy ring a bell?"

"Hi, Son!" The young thestral-thief grinned. Then, "Harryyyyyyy!"

"Parsssssel!"

The auror just stood in his own backyard, riveted to the ground, sharing the space with only the winged death-horse his adopted nephew had just stolen (borrowed) from the school herd. At the moment, he was feeling horribly ridiculed.

Harry, however, reacted exactly how any bilingual child of his age is supposed to: he ran to his twice-adopted cousin, immediately changing languages, and excitedly hissing the way he had picked up from the older boy. Tom hissed back, and cast a warming charm so that the youngling wouldn't freeze to death in the icy wind. Harry argued about something (James still couldn't understand one word of Parseltongue) then pulled his best "adult in charge" face, and switched back to English when reprimanding his own father with a seriousness only a three-year-old is capable of. "Get inside before you catch a cold, Dad! I won't be brewing Pepper-Up for you!"

James burst out laughing, and quickly followed the next generation to the living-room. Samhain really was about celebrating family together, and remembering the loved ones who weren't present anymore, not about freezing to the bone in the backyard, staring at a huge, skeletal, and slightly irritated mount.

-?-

"So, there was this madman of a jaguar animagus, casting shrinking charms on the bags of blackweed pollen we gathered…" Remus was telling jovially. He was still wearing his Peruvian garment, having arrived only an hour prior. "And we were just through the first round of howling after transformation, completely unable to think human-like."

"Didn't you put up wards?" Lily queried.

"We didn't think anyone would be crazy enough to slip in a valley with five werewolves at full moon."

"You should have known better," Sirius remarked, not pointing out the obvious fact that Remus practically grew up with three madmen wandering to odd places with a werewolf once in every month.

"Then I would be telling about boring days of Darkness Powder production…"

"So continue!" little Harry urged.

"All right! When we caught up with the jaguar-man, he was stuffing our bags into a basket that his animal form could carry with his fangs. When he spotted us, he immediately transformed, but Juan, our alpha, he is a very boring creep otherwise, was already in the air, with the four of us following closely. And DAING! Juan's snout crashed with the blackweed pollen, and he tore about three pounds of if loose. The next thing we knew, all five of us were standing at the storage deck, on two legs, butt naked, in the thickest cloud of blackweed I have ever seen. It was so dark that the pollen blocked out the full moon."

"And there was a jaguar, trying to get rid of you, I suppose."

"Yes! You see, raw blackweed doesn't affect werewolves, but it does affect everything else, and this specific animagus definitely fell into the 'anything else' category." And Remus continued, sharing how the group of five unarmed blackweed plantation workers faced off a blinded jaguar thief, and eventually cornered him in the powder silo. In the morning it turned out that the animagus was a wanted criminal, and the Patagonian Wizarding Council had put the equivalent of two thousand galleons on his head. They also received some extra for not just decapaciting, but also permanently blinding the guy. In addition to the insurance company paying for all the lost revenue, as angering werewolves was known to bring ill fortune."

"Who would have thought when we had our OWLs that you would be the rotten rich one?" Peter mused.

"I certainly knew I'd be disowned, so it was clearly somebody else," Padfoot noted, refilling everybody's glasses with a flick of his wand.

"But I can only be away for two months a year, never a Christmas, or Harry's birthday. I miss you all," Moony whispered, and soon found himself in the center of a group hug.

Tom, never one to appreciate happy suffocation, took the role of the photographer.

-?-

When everybody was full to the brim with candy (including some modified Bertie Bott's beans that were all filled with fire whiskey) and tired with bittersweet memories, the Potter manor calmed down. Peter fell asleep in rat form on the table, James was snoring in a slightly diagonal position, his legs on the stairs to Harry's room, his head on the living-room's carpet. Lily was sprawled out next to Harry's bed, while the three-year-old was carefully laying plant soil all across the building. Sirius somehow ended up sharing a stall with the borrowed thestral, the opaque-eyed beast giving him uncomfortable looks as he buried himself under a leathery wing and used its skeletal form as a pillow. Remus, despite the moon being just a thin line, was curled up in the dog-bed.

The resident Slytherin continued taking photographs, then owled the film to the apothecary, with a note that he wanted two copies of every shot, delivered to two separate addresses: to Godric's Hollow, and to the Rawenclaw tower.

-?-

"You're awake, Parsel-Child?"

"Hmmmhm."

"Would you consider brainstorming with an auror? I feel like we've already done all the mischief we could think about, and I need new input. I can't yet trust Harry with this. And even your Idiot called me crazy when I brought this up."

Tom's eyes sprang open immediately. His first gaze fell on the chaotic black hair of James / Son, the next one, on the clock behind him. It was almost noon, yet nobody else appeared to be awake.

"I read somewhere that messy black hair is typical for Albanian dhampirs. Elsewhere I heard it's a Potter trait. What's the truth?"

Prongs grinned, and settled on Parsel-Child's bed. "True and true. We do have familial connections to several hunters of the Balkan. As for Potter traits, there were several occasions of taking something dark, and making the best of it. The father of my Grandma Dorea was quite a nasty wizard, for example."

Tom nodded. "So that's how you chose to be an auror. Dhampir blood in a country where vampire hunting is banned."

"Maybe. But now I fear I have a conflict with not the bloodsuckers, but with the proud nation that dwells in treasures of the ground."

"You plan to rob Gringotts?"

"Well, yes, well, not quite. I mean, I just need to check some ancient family vaults, because evidence of murder might be hidden there. And the Ministry refuses to issue the permit for an official search."

"So you plan to rob Gringotts. Because, if you just take a look, then it will be too easy to guess who was so curious. Unless you have a preference for that outcome?"

Son blinked twice. "I'm an auror, I cannot go in and ROB THE WIZARDING BANK just to cover up my trail."

The child gave a distrusting look. "I would call you an idiot if the name wouldn't be already taken, Prongs."

Son appeared slightly insulted. "So?"

"I don't like how the goblins treat their dragons. Those are reptiles, family to snakes…"

A loud yawn came from the ground floor. Apparently, Idiot just found out that his sleeping conditions had left something to desire. Another voice, this one resembling a weak howl, demanded hot cocoa, or else its owner would fall back asleep. Lily soon joined them, wondering who had put fire whiskey into all the bonbon beans.

With a blink, the two wizards in the room agreed that this discussion absolutely didn't happen.

-?-

Tom shambled up the stairs to Rawenclaw House. Before the portrait could have asked any questions, he rambled, and not for the first time, "If I want to go to the DORMITORY that means I'm dead tired, right? Why make the tower this high?"

Not knowing the answer, the portrait simply opened. Tom, reeking of thestral dung, collected his soap and hurried to the bathroom. This was his first week of detention, and he had one more to do. Thestrals were entirely magical creatures, without a trace of mundane matter, but their dung was mostly semi-decomposed meat, and it smelled putrid, and very-very real to everyone.

To his joy, however, three owls awaited him when he returned to his dorm, this time, pristine clean. One carried the photographs he had taken at the Potters, the other had a quick note from James, and the third one was a school owl he had sent... Ugh, he untied the letter from the third owl first, and put it aside. He would need more courage for that later.

The photos were just as he'd expected, all funny and familiar and reminding him where he belonged. He would desperately need this feeling for later, so he went through each picture slowly. There was one that somebody else must have taken: Tom found his own self in the photo, reading from a story book, with Harry on his knees, Springscales on his shoulder, and Autumn, her son, curled around Harry like a necklace. He recalled the moment the unknown photographer had captured: he had been reading The Tale of Three Brothers in Parseltongue, and his audience kept hissing commentary all the time. Later they had considered visiting the Perevells' graves, but it had been too cold outside.

The note that James sent with the other owl simply read, 'Meat chunks + shrinking potion went brilliant. Might have overdosed the antidote. Read the rest in tomorrow's Prophet.' On the other side, was a large number five, with a few exclamation marks. Tom quickly re-read the note, then incinerated it, and vanished the ashes for good measure.

So, Son had indeed used the shrinking potion, which wouldn't have affected an adult dragon on contact. (And there had been the number five written on the other side!) So the potion was injected into meat chunks, which the auror had thrown all around the depths of Gringotts, wherever he suspected a dragon being chained. Magical as they were, chains never followed rapid size changes like a huge beast shrinking into a palm-sized hatchling. The tiny dragons (five of them?) then ate up the meat chunks with the antidote, regaining their original size on some other corridor of the great dungeon. Yes, Tom was certain the resulting chaos had allowed Son and his colleagues to go through the suspected vaults without any goblin asking them questions. He wondered what 'overdosing the antidote' possibly meant.

And then… There was the third owl's letter, in a muggle postal envelope. With shivering fingers, Tom opened it. Two photocopies were folded in there, and a machine-typed letter.

Tom took some calming breaths. He was raised by Gryffindors. A muggle sheet of paper can't hurt him.

'Dear Mr Black,

First of all, we all were greatly impressed by your wonderful owl that carried your inquiry. I apologize it took almost a month to reply, but the requested documents were in the archives and their retrieval presented complications.

We had one Tom Marvolo Riddle under our care from 1926 to 1931. You will find the copy of his birth certificate enclosed. His disappearance without a trace was the most unexplainable occurrence. The London Police closed the case in 1936 without any hopes of an explanation. I also enclosed the copy of that report.

I doubt there is any further help I can provide you with your research, but in hopes that I can, please don't hesitate to ask further. For one, we're looking forward to seeing your so intelligent owl again.

Yours sincerely,

(there was a pen-written signature of which not one character could be made out,)

Wool's Orphanage'

Tom gave a relieved sigh, he didn't even notice he was holding his breath. Then he went to examine the two photocopied sheets.

With a sudden determination, he grabbed his birth certificate, and went to find Professor Flitwick. Even if there was no Riddle in the book of magical children, there might have been a record of one Merope Gaunt.

-?-

Filius Flitwick was eager to help him look through the school registry, his eyes growing larger and larger with each new name. For long, the Gaunts had either declined to come to school, or (the most recent generations) didn't even bother to send a reply. But with every name, they found two magical parents, of whom they had also found some sort of record, with at least one of them always being sorted to Slytherin.

At the end of the search, when they had reached the front cover of the great book, Flitwick was positively gleaming. Tom, however, was thoroughly disappointed to find he was not blood related to Merlin as he had always hoped.


	4. Chapter 4 The Prison of Truth

**Finders, keepers –The Prison of Truth**

During his first year at Hogwarts, Tom Riddle-Black already made several foes and just as many allies. From the year above him, Bella Black was the one constantly out for him, and his housemate Quir was the one who normally went to get a prefect (or a teacher, or a ghost, or Peeves, or anyone he could find) to break up their duels. From his own year, he only had conflicts with two snobbish purebloods, but even those had only landed in the Infirmary for harassing their own half-blood housemates. Fighting was more of a Gryffindor habit -and he wasn't surprised when a boy nicknamed WW joined him, eager to learn new jinxes and counter-spells. WW was the first child of his parents, with five younger brothers and a baby sister, so his tendency to defend the defenseless could be explained away much like the stubbornness of an auror's honorary nephew's.

Next year, WW'soldest little brother, Charlie came to join their lose circle, followed by a brilliantly clumsy Hufflepuff metamorphmagus. That school year was made most memorable by a young Welsh green dragon someone smuggled to the corridor near the Gryffindor portrait entrance. That evening Tom learnt the hard way that Parseltongue is no more similar to dragon roar as classical Mandarin is similar to English, and his usual convincing charm was just as useless against the beast as Professor Warren's terrified screaming. Finally, it was the united Ravenclaw-Gryffindor quidditch team that managed to lure the dragon out of the castle, at the cost of several charred brooms, a few torched portraits, a beater's singed garment, and a few broken guardian statues. The last casualty was the whomping willow planted by the Shack Passage's entrance hole – the ignorant plant had taken offense of the young dragon flying too close, and the already agitated monster took out all his frustration on the branches whipping him.

Charlie decided then and there that he would work with dragons.

That same year, during the Easter holidays, Springscales' son Autumn slithered into Tom's travel trunk, which they both only noticed when said trunk was packed out in the Ravenclaw dormitory. It wasn't long before the young snake made himself home in the castle, however: he discovered he could slide through the water pipes that made a fine network all around the castle, and he made good use of his slim form. Having grown up with Harry, Autumn had more than once heard the story of a legendary Map that had been confiscated and locked inside Argus Filch's office. Once he had found the place (crumbled with various magical items) he started dragging everything, one by one, back to his human. The bathroom they used as Autumn's threshold was soon littered with Zonko's products, sheets of random old parchment, enchanted quills, and a self-shrinking cauldron, and then, one afternoon, just before exam week, the Marauder's Map was recovered. Tom and Autumn took it home to Godric's Hollow, both swelling with pride, and the snake decided he would accompany young Riddle-Black sometime again, despite being Harry's familiar by birth.

Before the third year, Son / Auror Potter had warned Tom and Idiot that blood purists had been blackmailing him, promising to bring a horrible curse on the extended family. Both Sirius and his adopted child gave their words to stay low and maintain constant vigilance. And they both did, although there wasn't an attack, not even a confrontation throughout the entire summer. But just as the year started, Tom got owl that Lily's muggle nephew, a boy mere weeks older than Harry, had been attacked by a werewolf, and although he survived, he had been infected with lycanthropy. The Potters spent the next month convincing the muggle father that denial wouldn't save him from the wolf that now lived within little Dudders. Still, it was only thanks to the timely interference of a dog and a stag that saved a shocked Vernon from his own son's deadly teeth. Remus offered to give up his well-paying job at the Peruvian plantation to help the young victim adapt; but Vernon insisted that, as a muggle, Dudley doesn't fall under the scope of the wizards' Werewolf Registry Act, and his life would be much safer if he continued to live without magical interference until the Wizarding World developed something more useful than just fear and disdain. Lily had to admit that Dudley's parents had a very valid point, and they already knew whom to ask for a warded cellar and potions for the days after. James, too, couldn't help but reluctantly agree with his in-laws' low opinion about the prejudiced wizardkind.

The year of Quir's OWL exams came. On the nights his closest ally had spent revising, Tom caught up on his reading. There was a new muggle novel he was very fond of: in a dystopian world, a brilliant child was humanity's only remaining hope, who also seemed to share a mind bond with the enemy. Tom's favorite character was the colonel who manipulated everything around the boy, until the so-called brilliant youngster unknowingly committed xenocide. In the end, the old one may have not been a hero, but he still qualified as the winner.

After Quir's OWL tests were finished, Tom asked Professor Flitwick if he could give a hand with his search for the last known Slytherin descendants. In the great book of the school's records, they found a vague description of a shack in the forest by Little Hangleton, from where all letters were returned unopened, or with the unfortunate owl's remains inside. Tom couldn't wait to uncover his true pedigree, and on the first day of the summer holidays, Sirius drove the motorbike to the gloomy village in Northern England.

Little Hangleton didn't appear like a wizard-inhabited village. Unlike Godric's Hollow, it centered around a foul-smelling pub, and the streets were littered in plastic. Men and women were wearing grey and brown clothing, almost all of them the same style. After the Wizarding World's colorful variety, Tom found the monotony frightening. But this was the place where his mother Merope Gaunt had originated from, and if his father Tom Riddle had indeed been a muggle, this could have been just the spot for them to meet. The curiosity he must have picked up with the 'real' Ravenclaws didn't let him rest, even if the parents' meeting would prove his cambion theory false.

Inside the village's central information-gathering hotspot (appropriately called the Hanged Man),Padfoot and his adoptee engaged in an impromptu drinking game with the few local patrons: Sirius offered a free round, then paid for an extra drink to all those who started eyeing Tom like they'd already seen that face somewhere.

The two wizards exchanged a glance much more sober than it would have been possible after their many drinks. Many of the older villagers had voiced how his appearance was similar to that of the old squire in his youth, and some wererude enough to start a betting pool if he was an illegitimate grandson of the old man.

The two parselmouths offered the muggles a round of their usual spirits, and the younger one introduced himself as Thomas Black. This was the same name he had used when he had owled the orphanage – when facing his own past, he preferred the safe background being a Black had offered. He guessed he was not cut out with Gryffindor courage.

Just an elbow further, two elderly muggles were loudly discussing the 'sad adventure of a marriage' the old squire once had had.

"Did he also have a child?" Sirius asked, sipping brandy from his glass, only blinking at them for a moment. Then, much more quietly he hissed, "Their sssspirit tasssstessss like fermented sssssoil."

"Not worsssse than itssssssdrinkerssss," Tom grimaced. Their whispered exchange passed without any of the villagers noticing. They were too busy sharing 'I told you' looks.

"Another round for these nice people!" Sirius demanded. Of the two of them, he appeared to be the less tipsy. Next to him, Riddle-Black was having some stomach issues, although the muggles couldn't have known its true reason were the three whole bezoars he had previously swallowed to avoid intoxication. All there was to be seen from the outside was a careless young man dragging along his underage friend for some prohibited fun. To this, the pub's patrons could relate better than they would have reacted to a story of a child who spent four years in a London orphanage, then was time-displaced because of a Ritual of Responsibility Placement.

"Old Rickety Riddle? Nahhh!" the bushiest man laughed.

"One marriage was more than enough for him. Ha ha!"

"Left her after a few months. Really, I envy him! No wife, no child, no problem!"

"The world is better off without yet another of him!"

"We most certainly are!"

"This round's on me!" a villager offered. "For the good joke, my gentlemen!"

Sirius accepted the drink, but saw that Tom was hesitating. "To sssssstupidity that issssn't limited by lacking magic," he offered to his adopted son quietly.

Tom rolled his eyes, and downed his next glass without thinking. The three bezoars had dried his stomach painfully, so at least he made sure to use them to the top of their capacity.

So, he wasn't a cambion. And these men must have known both his parents. Blood parents, he immediately corrected the inner statement. His true family were Sirius Orion Black, Springscales, and some select few belonging to either of the two.

"It'ssssdisssgusssting how they ssssspeak about my blood father jusssst to sssssee if I take offenssssse on hissss behalf. To sssssee if we're related, sssso that they can feed their gosssssipmillssss," he sighed.

"Mugglesssss being Ssssslytherinssss," Padfoot replied with the same quiet tone of hiss. "Sssssomehow that makessss me itch to prank ssssome of them."

Tom forced a smile on his face. It would be so unlike Sirius to leave a pub without chaos in his wake. But what did Springscales tell him? Food, time, water, heat, magic, the one he could never remember, and…. knowledge. Knowledge is what he was here for, not pranks. "Whom did he leave after a few months?" he asked aloud.

"There was a creepy hen with a postman's eyes… you got it, right? One eye on the envelope, the other on the street number, that's what a postman's eyes look like, ha!"

"Yes, it's really funny."

"So there was that thing, living in the forest."

"The entire family was like that. Cavemen!"

"Yeah, cavemen! Somehow, Miss Postman-Eyes got Rickety Tom to marry her. Then they moved, to London, if memory serves me right. It wasn't maybe half a year later that Rickety Tom came back, but by then, his fiancée dumped him for good."

"For a while, he kept babbling about Crooky-Eyes feeding him something, he said love potion, but really – no magic in the world could have made any man to consider taking the daughter of that caveman to bed! Much less, marry her! Ha ha!"

"Next round's on me!" another villager shouted, banging his mug on the counter, not for the first time. His tone earned him a long growl from an animagus, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Lacking mannerssss," Tom also remarked. The two of them couldn't pretend to be more drunk than that muggle was for real.

While the drinks were handed out, Sirius whispered, "Sssssothissssisss the time to find out the fate of the lasssst but one Ssssslytherinssss."

"Was she called Merope Gaunt?" Tom asked, very sober all at once. A 'yes' or a 'no' would decide whether he was really not a cambion. His father, the Tom Riddle who was not called Marvolo, was a muggle and this information had been confirmed already. If the caveman family the villagers were talking about were the last of Slytherin… then, well, he'd made the right choice to distance himself from the family and the House. He was a Marauder. He was a Black. He was not a decrepit blood purist!

"Gaunt, that's what they were. I recall one Morfin."

"Man, if you can imagine someone uglier than Merope, that was him. He died about fifteen years ago."

"That. He stopped growling at us like a rabid beast, so I'm sure he must have dropped."

There was a pause. Tom was about to ask Padfoot what sort of prank would be the worthy treatment of these creatures, and leave the Hanged Man as fast as they could. He had heard enough. He was the son of an especially weak willed muggle and catastrophic witch, and apparently both of whom had had the social skills of a gargoyle. But he had been conceived like any other wizard or muggle, not through interference by malevolent lust-daemons. Just an offspring of two worthless humans: a misguided muggle and an inbred Slytherin.

"Thankssssss for being there for me," he whispered to Padfoot.

"I promisssed to come along. It'sssss OK."

"Thankssss for being my family."

Sirius looked into his adopted son's eyes, wondering if the cheap muggle drinks got through the bezoars, after all. Never in the past ten years had Tom expressed true gratitude, nor had he acknowledged that Padfoot could have easily passed him to someone else to raise. Tom had odd skills and odd quirks, never liked displays of emotions, no, he was independent to the core. Sirius had long since accepted him this way, just like he had accepted Remus' mood swings that came with him being a werewolf. Discovering his own background must have hit something deep in his adopted son. With a million feelings in his eyes, Idiot replied, "Thankssss for the same."

The guy with the habit to bang his mug moved to do it again. In perfect sync, the two wizards pointed their wands at him under the table, casting a cushioning charm on the mug so that it could never be banged on anything again, and on the counter so that nothing would ever be banged on it.

There was a moment of silence and confusion, as if expecting the others to start the conversation anew. A man of about Padfoot's age started coughing in the corner, not yet used to the amount of alcohol he had taken in the past hour. An aged one started whistling an off-key melody.

Apparently, the improvised gossip session was over. But just when the two wizards were about to stand up from their high chairs, the bartender huffed, "In his last few years, that Morfin gruff kept saying what a wonderful stone was getting lost with him."

"I saw it too! It was a shapeless black thing, with an angular eye carved on it."

Tom sat back immediately. "An angular eye?"

"He gurgled that it was the Stone of Death! Like such a thing exists!"

Now Sirius straightened as well. "Maybe we should go now. Gentlemen, thank you for the company."

"But…" his adopted son started. It was just about to get interesting!

"Tom, I said, we must go!" Sirius insisted, then stormed out of the Hanged Man, no longer bothered to uphold the image of a drunken muggle. Cheap spirit was never enough to hold him down, and along with his stepson, he had also taken bezoars, although not as many.

"Go where?" Tom asked.

Padfoot already turned the motorbike in the direction of the supposed Gaunt shack."Please don't ask why, but I am certain, at least one of the Deathly Hallows exists for real. And if that one does, so might the Stone of Resurrection."

"You talk like you didn't expect me to figure out Son's cloak," Tom pointed out as he hastily took his usual place on the vehicle.

Never again did either of them visit Little Hangleton's dirty pub, and not once did they talk about the ring Tom MarvoloRiddle-Black had removed from a long-dead person's finger bones.

-?-

As much as Siriusly Enchanted Objects prospered, Tom preferred his own belongings to be wizard-made from the start. Even with many Ravenclaws using muggle inventions (a habit none of the other houses had picked up, showing just why the blue house was the only one for the mentally talented) a pencil with rubber end or a wallet with hook-and-loop would have gained enough attention to have them checked more thoroughly. An inkwell, on the other hand, was the least suspicious item in a wizard's pocket, and security spells around it didn't require any explanation, either.

The inside of the tiny jar had been customized entirely by its owner, however. Tom had started with the undetectable expansion charm, with the same modification the vanishing machines' doors all had: Tom had long since dubbed it the 'conical expansion charm'.When they had been working on the Vanishing Machines, the tricky part was to bring the magic forward, so that the ingoing item (or an escaping human) would be relatively shrinking before he reached the door. This time, Tom applied an additional variant of the spell, so that the pot's stopper still covered the glass's mouth entirely. There were additional cushioning charms on both the inside and the surface, and of course the anti-fracture protection the jar came with. If a wizard screwed out the cork, it even worked as a regular inkwell, only revealing its magic if the user pulled the cork out without any lateral moves.

On the enlarged inside, Tom had a magically heated habitat for Autumn to sleep in, although the young snake only used the inkwell when it was too cold for him on the outside. Embedded in the sand was a set of vials with the most important first aid potions, as well as a fistful of Peruvian instant darkness powder and a small notebook with a ballpoint pen. Tom still needed his Siriusly Enchanted pocket knife to have access to his school trunk (the one time he left it unlocked in the Ravenclaw dormitory, it immediately fell victim to his yearmates' curiosity) but Padfoot was generous enough to provide him a second one. Since his original knife was number seven, Sirius numbered the new one 7/2 and thus the old one became 7/1.

In September, it was the 7/1 knife that opened the door of the second floor's bathroom, as the lock had been spelled not to let in boys. Following Autumn's instructions, the last of the Slytherins found the snake marking, and a few hours later added the Chamber of Secrets to the Marauders' Map. On the precious parchment, a thick line of ink marked the hidden room's one and only, thousand-year-old inhabitant.

Just a few days later Tom also got the opportunity to get the entire Chamber scrubbed clean. As the place had been part of the castle's drainage system since the eighteenth century, and the basilisk had been hunting various pets and lake inhabitants, the corridors surrounding the Chamber had quite the odor. So, when WW alerted him that 'baby blood purists' were harassing muggleborns for not knowing a single household charm, Tom didn't hesitate before providing Bella and her cronies an opportunity to show off their own cleaning skills. He even altered their memories to believe it was Filch who gave them the detention. The tricky part was getting the basilisk out before he would have glared the unwilling cleaning staff to death.

The old beast was a real piece of work. His species was named 'the king of snakes' for the red crest that resembled a crown if one squinted hard enough (which perhaps nobody ever did, at least not on a living basilisk, as the crest was too close to those deadly yellow eyes) and the animal was more than aware of his title. While the unwilling cleaning staff was working, Tom spent an entire hour locked up in one of the girl's toilet stall, because the wash-basins' area was full with mirrors, duplicating the number of directions the beast could stare in to finish his boy. 'His royal majesty'was anything but a malleable familiar, and took the opportunity to berate him for abandoning his heritage, for befriending blood traitors, and for keeping only one puny servant in the person of Autumn. It was beyond Tom to explain that 1, his heritage was nothing to be proud of; 2, never had he befriended anybody, blood traitor or not; and 3, Autumn was not his servant, more like a fr… All right, he admitted that he had to reconsider the second point.

The minutes crawled by, and Tom was sitting in the locked toilet stall, with closed eyes, just to be safe. He was a Slytherin by birth, Ravenclaw by choice, and despite being raised by Gryffindors he wouldn't have taken unnecessary risks. Except for having already lured the huge snake out of the pipe system so that some confunded pureblood children could clean out its usual hiding spot.

Through the basilisk's haughty hissing, he barely heard the voice of somebody looking for the three disappeared 'noble heirs'. He cracked his eyes open just enough to blink at the Map in his hands, not trusting the gigantic serpent to be glaring elsewhere. And not even the Map was helping, as it didn't show any names approaching, and Tom only had half a minute to realize why. That voice belonged to the Bloody Baron, Helena Ravenclaw's old boyfriend and killer. The old ghost had it out for Tom ever since he had ridiculed Bella Black the first time. The only joy the young man found in the situation was that the serpent and the spectre had no common language.

Unlike young Riddle-Black, the Baron had no need for an all-opening knife, he merely glided through the closed door into the bathroom. Tom heard his threatening voice, "If I find you're behind this again, Riddl…"

There was an odd silence before Tom whispered, "I'm Riddle-Black," and his statement got no reply.

"That'sssss funny," His Royal Majesty the basilisk noted after a while. 'I thssssssought the dead can't turn to sssstone."

"WHAT?" Tom jumped up, marching out of the toilet stall, but remembering to close his eyes before reaching the sinks.

He crashed into something cold, wind-like; solid and nonexistent at the same time. The basilisk noted that 'sssssomebodydoubtsssss my sssstrengthssss', but he was talking to himself, or so Tom guessed. Centuries of loneliness might do that to a royalty.

The kid lifted up a hand, trying to make out the form of whatever he had hit. It could be a ghost, after all. Who else could that be?

"You killed a dead ghossssst?" Tom queried.

"I turned him to ssssstone. Living humansssss don't ssssurvive it."

"Jussssst great, your modesssss thighnessss," the wizard replied, his eyes still closed. Now he had to find a way to get rid of a petrified spectre, pull the little purebloods out of the Chamber (which they hopefully had cleaned by now), confund them again so that they'd still believe it was Filch, and make sure everybody gets back to their dorms. Yet again, he cursed Rowena Ravenclaw for placing the blue dormitory in one of the highest towers.

And then, just as Tom was considering the possibilities, he heard voices, this time two females. Consequently, both had to be capable of entering the bathroom men had been banished from, which could have been foreboding if they are alive at the moment.

"How am I ssssssuppossssed to exssssplain what I'm doing in the girl's ssssbathssssroom at ten in the evening, with a basssssilissssk and a dead ghossssst in my company?"

"You're not worthssssssy of my ideassssss, you puny sssssservant of blood traitorssss and mudbloodsssss."

"Not that I exsssspected any help, your majessssty," Tom's hiss was irritared.

To make things worse, he recognized the voices by now. The newcomers were two women of his own house, both of whom could be checking the bathroom for female students: the ghost Helena Ravenclaw, the Grey Lady, and the living Professor Myrtle Warren, the Defense teacher. Tom wished he had more success with the disillusionment charm, so that he could disguise himself when things went -thought, he stopped. He had yet to practice making his own self invisible, but was that what he needed in this situation?

The royally lofty snake let out a hiss of surprise when he felt something soft spreading up his body, and he was shocked beyond measure when, irritated by the boy's insolence, he turned around to stare him to death, only to get his mouth tied shut with a binding spell.

"That'ssss for trying to kill me, your illusssstriousss highnesss," the young wizard said, looking fearlessly in the direction where the visible spell-ropes were crawling on the head of the now camouflaged snake. "Now ssssstay put and keep your ssssecretssss."

That idea didn't appeal to the basilisk. His mouth tied, he tried in vain to bite Slytherin's unworthy descendant who had the audacity to disillusion him. Ramming the boy was his next idea, only to be hit with a badly-aimed petrifying spell. The perks of invisibility – he escaped a direct hit but wasn't in the mood to appreciate the irony. Tom Riddle-Black, however, only had time to lock himself in a toilet stall yet again, before Professor Warren walked in, chatting with the Grey Lady about some DADA assignments she had to mark this evening. Spotting the oddly moving spell-ropes that seemingly tied themselves around nothing, but still hissing horrible insults at the teacher, Myrtle Warren just shook her head and opted for the stall farthest from the strange phenomenon. While she was using the loo, Helena Ravenclaw suddenly yelped in surprise, and Tom remembered too late that there also was a petrified Baron in the bathroom, a sightLady Ravenclaw obviously didn't miss.

"What is it, Helena?" Professor Warren asked, while (the only one that night!) she was using the toilet for the purpose it was originally intended for.

"I'm just having a good day, what's wrong with that?" the Grey Lady replied.

It was only much later that Tom got into bed that night, but he had earned a new ally that evening in the person of his chosen house's ghost. He had cast a permanent sticking charm on one of the stall doors, one behind which the Lady had dragged her late love interest, and they agreed never to talk about what had happened.

-?-

As any proper Ravenclaw, Riddle-Black took his OWL year seriously. He checked the essays WW and his younger brothers had written for their classes. He had huge tomes at hand always, including that memorable time he had caught Bella Black drawing blood from a firstyear for some ritual. Autumn kept an eye on the Map for him so that he could focus on his studies while patrolling like all prefects were supposed to do in the night. He cast a wandless silencing charm and continued reading when WW's twin brothers had spilled a liquid firecracker in the library.

He also read through the night he had spent by Idiot's bed at St. Mungo's. There had been a battle, at one of the safe houses or so he had heard, and Padfoot had taken the wash machine network to bypass the anti-apparation spells. Son was meant to follow him, but was held up by the Head of Department. It took Prongs only two seconds to punch the senior auror out of the way, but by the time he had arrived at the scene, Sirius had already been cursed half-dead by the purists.

Coughing up some bile and wrapped in bandages from head to toe, Sirius looked at him.

"Nice of you to come."

"I can't trust Crouch to have this room guarded. I could as well take you back to the Lestrange brothers."

"So were they identified?"

"Thicknesse had dropped that name to Son, who knew better than to ask for clarification." Taking his adoptive father's grunt as a polite request to continue, he added, "The McKinnons had moved to Hogsmeade, as hiding doesn't seem to be any good to them. They're preparing to leave for the States, despite all their conflicts with the MACUSA."

"Yes, in their shoes I wouldn't mind how awkward that will be," Sirius levitated a glass of butterbeer (fire whiskey was not allowed in the ward) to his mouth before continuing, "when the President and her ex's new family meet."Then he gave a very displeased sound, and grimaced, "Gauze-flavored beer. And I thought I was through the worst."

Tom stayed that night, standing guard and presumably keeping any attackers away. Lily took the day shift, while Tom grabbed some food and shared his thoughts with James.

The auror had spent the last day under his Cloak of Invisibility, searching his superiors' offices and following unsuspecting people on the Ministry's corridors. By the weekend he had a long list of purists, and wished to consult with the Black side of his family to decide whom to track on Saturday.

"I miss Peter, he was the best with this sort of thing."

Idiot and his adoptee exchanged looks. Peter had disappeared months before, and only the two of them had been told where and why. With a grimace, Tom said, "If I could tell you where he is, I would."

"Why in Merlin's name did you use a SNAKE as secret-keeper, Parsel?" James exploded. "Only so that nobody with a normal vocabulary can be told?"

Tom nodded. "Safety first. He had been spying for years, he was due to be discovered once. He's safe and well, that's all I can tell you."

Sirius stirred under his many bandages, and made a threatening growl at his adopted son's words. Yes, Peter was safe and well, after having been discovered to have been playing the double game. The little rat had been given a choice, whether he wanted to stay in Wizarding Britain or to take an Unbreakable Oath to search for Ravenclaw's diadem and never return without it. To make the first option less appealing, Tom took the Secret 'Peter Pettigrew had changed sides to the blood purists' under an especially tough Fidelius charm, placing it in the soul of an unusually intelligent snake he had befriended a few days prior. She only revealed the secret to Padfoot before she went her own sweet way. Now the purists would have no way to remember that their targets' childhood friend was now on their side. That had made espionage on their behalf a VERY improbable option for Wormtail.

James straightened on the visitor's seat, and showed the list of known purists or their allies.

"My brother, right?" Sirius sighed. "He's one."

"Pretty much all the ancient houses have a member here," Tom noted. "Look here, even Prince, and the pure line had died out years ago."

"Then how is it on the list? Do you plan to chase all the ghosts, James?"

"You can't see from your bed, but Parsel is pointing at Snivellus's name. He's the last known scion."

"But muggle-raised," Sirius argued. "Why would the purists take him in?"

"Maybe for his potions?" James said. "That's Lily's best guess."

"But Lily has a muggle background, and very little insight," Parsel argued. "I think the key is the Wizengamot. Even an unpure can represent his House if there's no better at hand. Pass me that list… Yes, Crouch is the first name here, but the senior or the young one?" Not waiting for an answer, Tom continued. "Most noble houses missing from the purists' ranks are either on the verge of extinction, or, like you, in the line of fire anyway. Creepy. Say, all these witches and wizards, in theory, had done something Unforgivable that got documented in the archives. One sweep of apolitical cleanse, like what some are already advocating for, and these all land in Azkaban. One drastic change like a new Minister… and the Wizengamot is cut in half."

"Merlin," Sirius moaned. "Anybody of the remaining families could fill it up with their own lackeys."

"Entire families could be wiped out," Son glared.

"So refrain from the castrating charm in the next duels, Prongs." Idiot lifted a bandaged hand to give his adopted son a thumbs-up. "It's great to have the Slytherin descendant on our side, Tom."

Tom hissed back that he couldn't have left the Gryffindors to their own devices."You're my ressssponssssibility," he added.

-?-

Despite the glooming conflict and several other attacks, the rest of the Hogwarts schoolyear went as normal as it was supposed to. Meanwhile, Son was almost killed securing a Head ofDepartment's new house with Ministry-approved wards, but (despite Bagman's claims that it was unnecessary) he had been wearing gloves when he had collected the old runestones and so, only his garment caught fire from the cursed pebble. The Ministry, of course, had written it down as residual magic left by the former owners. Bagman had claimed that it was the accident he was shocked over, not Son's survival. (He had been irritated, however.)

With Harry no longer taking up all her time, Lily rejoined a secret charity organization led by her childhood friend Dorcas Meadowes. She spent several hours each day in muggle hospitals, casting healing spells from under her husband's cloak or handing out potions disguised as the local nurse. Of course the Ministry would have sent both women to Azkaban if it ever got out, but considering the pain the purists had caused to families of muggleborn witches and wizards, Lily reasoned it was only fair to provide some magical help. She never told about it to anyone, however, least of all Severus Snape, whom she met almost every time she went shopping for potion ingredients.

Confined to his room until he was in a shape to defend himself again, Sirius had developed a set of emergency wands. These all shared a zouwu's mane hairlines as their cores, but the outer layer could be anything from bamboo chopsticks through pencils to trellises of potted plants. The smell of a preparing draught had filled Godric's Hollow whenever he was soaking the non-magical wood in it for an entire week, but he was quite satisfied with the results: the one-use wands could be hidden anywhere in plain sight, and they were so weak in magic that the Expelliarmus spell didn't recognize them as 'arms'. They often left bite marks on their wielders' hands, however, and obviously they were nowhere near a real wand's strength or accuracy, but a panicked wizard who'd been assaulted in his home would still rather use one of these than attempt wandless magic, or reasoning with an attacker. Prongs, however, had voiced his concerns that any crime could be committed with a single-use wand and the culprit's real one would never prove their masters' guilt under a Priori Incantatem. He'd stocked up of them, however, and Padfoot guessed he had done so for exactly that reason.

Tom got stellar marks for his OWL practicals, then, early July, received a howler for what he had done to his DADA essay sheet. In his opinion: knowing the Ministry, there was good chance the exam texts would be marked by worthless bookworms who never saw a werewolf in their lives (the main essay's given topic was lycanthropy) and never got any own experience with anything truly Dark. Consequently, they were unworthy to judge his knowledge. The hex he had put on the essay parchment was a fine piece of art, however, and a proper curse-breaker must have found it inquiring. In the Ministry's opinion: the 'thrice-damned fifthyear' sent half the education staff to Mungo's. Subsequently, Tom wouldn't be allowed to continue DADA class, for which the bespectacled woman was rather grateful. Sirius fused the howler's remaining pieces, and, along with the infamous essay sheet, hanged it on the wall in a photo frame. Tom was his son in all but blood, and now nobody would argue that statement.

After the twelfth anniversary of Tom's arrival to Godric's Hollow, which more or less stood for a sixteenth birthday, Sirius took his adopted child for a tour in the Alps. Not to Austria, as Padfoot put it: not yet, because Tom still had his Trace. Sirius knew what destination was on his adopted son's mind, however, and he promised to prepare him for getting into the place that would, by humungous strong wards, repel any sort of magical transportation.

So they went mountaineering.

Despite still lamenting about the numerous stairsteps to Ravenclaw Tower every other day, Tom not complained once when he had to climb three hundred meters on an icy and almost vertical hillside with only a muggle sit harness, a pair of crampons on his boots, and Sirius belaying him with a nylon rope in one hand and his wand in the other. Their excessive use of dittany marked some memorable learning experiences. When moving upwards no longer presented a challenge to them, they started jinxing each other mid-pitch. First there was just an occasional tickling hex while the other was sticking a bolt anchor, but that quickly escalated into full duels and often ended with one or both wizards drinking skele-gro after decking.

The first few days they used heating charms and slept through the night in bivouacs, but by the end of the week they decided muggle-style climbing was too easy and that nighttime was the perfect opportunity to besiege a summit with only a few meters of conjured rope, some sticking charms, and, occasionally, repairing or transfiguring the broken pieces of equipment that other climbers had left behind. Tom discovered an ascender in the thick ice, and wouldn't rest until he retrieved it, determined to charm it and set it to better use on the outside wall of his House's tower.

On a more relaxing day, they returned to the muggle world, curious to try other, less tiring means of transportation. Something must have got lost in translation, however, because their guide directed them to a via ferrata route. This misunderstanding led to them learning or discovering a number of new spells, including one that reverses gravity around any given portion of a cable.

Those were, they agreed, the best two weeks any wizard could ask for with a muggle way of entertainment.

Wizarding Britain didn't welcome them back with the best of news. James, who was only sticking to his position as an auror so that he could keep an eye on the Ministry's inner workings, was hit by a bleed-out hex while searching a suspect's house under his Cloak of Invisibility. He had almost died before his partner had found him. Lily, who was only in St Mungo'sat the time for advice on her 'guerilla healer' activism, found him still anemic on a hospital bed. Yet James insisted that she secured the Cloak before fetching a blood replenisher.

Later, it took him two months to cajole his heritage back from wherever his wife had hidden it.

-?-

After the adventures in the summer break, sixth year was a quiet one. Without DADA, and with Quir too busy with all the NEWTs he intended to take, Tom found himself just staring out at the Forbidden Forest or talking to Salazar's basilisk about random books he had read. Gazing up at the darkened, very still form of the petrified Bloody Baron, Tom wondered what he would have become without Padfoot as his family, Prongs as his moral compass, without Peter's constantly underestimated resourcefulness, or Moony's cheer. The snake insisted he would have become more powerful, not held back by Gryffindors around him. But, as Tom pointed out, power doesn't correlate with happiness, especially not when the cost is to put up with Slytherins24/7. His Royal Highness questioned his loyalty to his, as the snake called it, 'true family' one last time before sliding down the sewer pipe to the Chamber, swearing that he would bite his master's heir if he dares to bother him again.

Springscales reassured Tom, in a mail written down by Sirius, that no snake should be expected to offer their loyalty to any human just because they are family. In fact, the oldest ones still claim to remember when all of 'humanity'consisted of only one man and his one Eve. How could anyone expect to be treated differently from another person, if they all are descendants of the same couple?

Sirius's own remark followed in the same letter: if the Genesis had any truth to it, then the first humans both had to be parselmouths. Admittedly, he didn't know what to make of this realization.

Tom soon wrote back that he had done some research with Quir in the topic in the Restricted Section. There might have been a time when the entire humanity could talk to the snakes, but from the first documented centuries, there were only two known wizards gifted with the ability. One was Asclepios, the healer who had offered to bring Orion back from the dead and was promptly killed for his troubles, then placed on the night sky for all aspiring healers to see. The other was Herpo the Foul, whose life was marked by three discoveries: the first horcrux ever made, the first basilisk ever created, and the tragic realization that the former doesn't make a good match with the venom of the latter. As Tom stated, he didn't want to know which loser was he closer related to.

To answer that question anyway, when he got home for Samhain, Sirius welcomed him with the Ophiuchus constellation charmed on their living-room's wall.

"Because of his rash courage?" the teen queried, amazed by the tiny glowing stars. It truly was a great constellation, and he suspected that the pattern on the wall was enchanted to follow the position of the real stars, just like the Astronomy Tower's ceiling. Currently on the opposite wall, the Canis maior was known to slowly move the same way.

"Because, if history repeats itself within a family, then you must be related to him through Cadmus Perevell," Sirius replied.

Tom immediately clutched his fingers on the enchanted inkwell he had always carried in his inner pocket. "I understand," he said in a solemn voice.

-?-

Winter and springtime came and went, the last school term for Quir and Bella. Except for a weekend after he officially reached seventeen, Tom Marvolo Riddle-Black had an uneventful time, a quiet before the storm. It still felt wrong when, in June, Professor Flitwick yelled the usual "Quirrel! Riddle-Black!" for the last time. Come September, it would be reduced to "Riddle-Black" only. They had made a good team together.

Oddly enough he realized he would also miss Bella Black. The last time their wands clashed, somebody from the background shouted "Just kiss already!" Bella, with her trademark reflexes, immediately replied, "I'd sooner kiss a dementor!" And that was it, the next time he saw her was on the Hogwarts Express, on her way to a new life where the school's Founding Act wouldn't protect her from the consequences of being an adult.

-?-

Tom was staring at the Map that now only showed Albus Dumbledore, Argus Filch, Myrtle Warren, and very few ghosts on the Hogwarts grounds. Even Peeves seemed to have gone on a holiday. The Headmaster's and the caretaker's presence could be explained, they both lived there. But what was the Defense teacher doing in the broom cupboard? Surely she couldn't be secretly picking a broom for a leisure flight? Yes, the entire set was brand new, thanks to the Department of Magical Games and Sports finally taking pity on the firstyears and replacing all the old brooms with Nimbus-1800s. But Professor Warren never showed any interest in flying.

"What makessss you ssssso upssssset?"

He looked up from the old parchment just as Harry sat down on the bed next to him. In the boy's neck, as usual, hang Autumn, with Springscales using his leg as a ladder, her head already reaching the pillow.

"Jusssst sssssomething refusssesss to make ssssenssse," Tom pointed at the sheet. "Thissss teacher hasss no busssinesss with the ssssschoolbroomssss."

Harry set Autumn on the pillow next to his mother, and looked at him with intense green eyes. "It'ssss good you're here. My wolf coussssin jussst went home two dayssss ago, but he'ssss not assss nice to talk to."

Tom frowned, remembering the waxing gibbous he'd seen the night before. The full moon would be in two days. What was Dudley Dursley doing in a mixed-abilities villagewhen he was fully human?

Seeing him frown, Harry explained, "Hissss dad'sss ssissster wassss vissssiting them. Dudley hatessss that sssssisssster'sssss dogssss."

"And that walrusssss of a father won't bother to exssssplain that he'sssss a werewolf," Tom nodded. He still remembered the first time he had visited Lily's muggle sister and the man who later married her. Vernon had always been fun to anger even with the most harmless magic. Petunia was jealous over the gift only her sister was worthy of. But they had tried to live a normal muggle life, and pretended quite convincingly that all was well. Dudley had been visiting his maternal aunt once in every month, was there any problem with that? (Apart from their faces turning purple at the mention of said aunt, or her family.)

But really, Tom had to admit this was the best for Dudders. Ever since he'd received the bite, he'd been with at least one adult animagus for every full moon, escaping most of the symptoms that come from being locked up and/ or alone for those critical few hours. Furthermore, thanks to the Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, other muggles weren't likely to pick up the clues, and even if they would, Tom doubted their reaction would be half as bad as those of a random, undereducated wizard. As for Son and Idiot, they enjoyed the continued excuse to roam free in their animal forms once a month, and had little to fear that the muggles would carelessly drop their illegal ability to a Ministry that largely ignores their kind.

"Who issss that?" Harry suddenly asked, pointing at the still active Map in front of his twice-adopted relative. "The name issss familiar."

"A halfblood purissst," Tom replied with a grimace. "Once he wassss bessst friendssss with your mom, but by now he offered hissss wand to thosssse trying to kill your parentssss. And a Potionssss Masssster. He issssss the reasssson why you should never eat or drink anythssssing that wasssssn't well guarded."

The seventeen- and the nine-year-old both turned back to the parchment, rubbing their heads with a frown.

"Sssso let'sssss do ssssomethsssing to him," Autumn suggested, abandoning his spot on the pillow.

"Yessss. Pleasssse?" Harry looked into the older one's eyes as well.

"You ssssstay home," Tom strictly stated. "Don't you get a detention two yearssss before you'd ssssstart Hogwartssss."

Harry gave a disappointed nod. Two more years before he could follow in Tom's footsteps.

Satisfied, the teen marched to Padfoot's workshop, declaring, "I need the bike, but I'll be back before dinner. Mischief calls."

-?-

Autumn slipped out of the inkwell, and hissed at the ghost who was talking to his allied human. As it appeared to the young snake, the lady was making Tom paler with each sentence. "What issss it, Parsssel?" he demanded to be told. The plan was to find Severus Snape, distract him, then get to his potion box and see what they can find. Changing any phial of Veritaserum for plain tapwater was one of the options, for example.

"Lady Helena sssssayssss Professssssor Warren isssss under the Imperiusssss," Tom translated. "She hassss taken the new ssssschoolbroomsss and gave them to the purisssstssss whossssec amp issss in a cottage jussssst over Hogsssssmeade." The young man then exchanged a few more words with the long-dead woman, then continued, "Thosssse are marked asss sssssschool property and their arrival doessss not trigger the wardssss. Besidessss, the Headmasssster is taking a bathsssss now." He opened the Map, and consulted it with the Grey Lady watching over his shoulder. The names of Bartemius Crouch, Druella and Bellatrix Black, Lucius Malfoy and Rabastan Lestrange were moving up the stairs to the Headmaster's office, with Severus Snape as the foregoer so that any curse or trap would hit him, not the purebloods.

"He musssst be the target," Autumn stated, nodding his head towards Dumbledore's office.

"That'ssss more than obvioussss," Tom replied.

"But we can get there firsssst," Autumn continued, and that, apparently, was new to his human ally.

"How?"

"Exsssspanding the water pipessss, and a bubblehead sssspell for bothssss of usss," Autumn explained. "If the water isssss ssssstill running, we can go in rather fasssst. Meanwhile they will have to passsss all the security charmssssss."

-?-

Peeking out from the showerhead, Autumn hissed for his partner to break the pipe and come through. Dumbledore was getting robed in the nearest room, not a sight Tom couldn't live without.

By the time he was done with wordlessly repairing the tube and drying up the pool of spilled hot water, the Headmaster was sitting in an enormous armchair, putting his halfmoon-shaped eyeglasses on, an important-looking letter in his other hand.

Tom cast a drying charm on himself.

The professor scanned the letter for curses or authenticity marks, put his wand back in his robe's pocket, and started to open the envelope.

The door to his office burst open, an in rushed Bella Black, the potioner following her like a lackey. Dumbledore didn't even have time to draw his wand again, a reductor spell blew up his table. The explosion sent the old man flying across his room, and he crashed into a warded statue of marble and granite.

Bellatrix laughed.

Severus Snape drew his wand.

"Ssssstay in cover," Tom hissed, and straightened up, partially still soaked.

Bellatrix noticed her rival and accused him of trying to defend the old coot.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," Riddle-Black declared. "But I have my own reason to come and defeat him myself."

Hearing that, the wizard with blooded white hair and broken half-moon spectacles, stirred in the corner. From the angle his lower body was in, Tom guessed he had suffered some spinal damage from crashing into the warded stone.

"You have always manipulated everyone around you, Headmaster!" Tom cried out loud. "YOU USED US AS IF WE WERE CHESS PIECES!"

"Tom…" the old wizard whispered. "My boy, Tom."

Lucius Malfoy and Barty Crouch entered the room. It was the senior auror, not the known extremist son of his.

"PEOPLE TRUSTED YOU, HEADMASTER!" Tom continued, as if he hadn't seen the newcomers. "And what did you give them in return? Mundungus is dead! Your other spy, Peter? I had to save him when he was found out! I had to get the werewolf job for Remus, because all you cared about were the bits of news he would deliver from the feral packs – all you ever valued him for!"

Snape sighed in the background, and lowered his wand.

"Tom, I thought you were on our side, I trusted Sirius could raise you well," the aged wizard whispered, blood now dripping from his scalp, tainting the well-kept long beard as well. He struggled to sit up, resting his weight on his hands, shivering with the pain of physical injuries and betrayal. "You chose to part from Slytherin."

Bellatrix harrumphed, then swiped an ancient tome from its holder so that she could climb and sit on it, and watch the verbal match from a better perspective.

"How could I part from what I am?" Tom theatrically asked. "Through the purest Gaunt line, I'm descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself. Parselmouth, like he was, and like Herpo the Foul before him. But don't you lie that you have ever trusted me, headmaster. Do you remember the first time we have talked? Do you remember how I had to trick you into listening to what I was about to say!?"

Through his shattered glasses, tearful sky-blue eyes looked into Tom's midnight-blue gaze.

"For years, you have been telling us what to do. Tonight, this will end."

With the tiniest nod of understanding, the broken old man straightened as much as he could.

Tom raised his aspen wood -turul pinion core wand, aimed it straight above Albus Dumbledore's nose.

There was a bright green flash, and the headmaster collapsed back on the floor.

Bellatrix laughed like a maniac.

-?-

It was a gloomy afternoon when James Potter knocked on his neighbor's door. He was still wearing his auror uniform, which was a rare occurrence, although not unprecedented.

"Since when do you need to knock, Son?" Padfoot asked him, not suspecting anything yet.

"I do now," Prongs replied. "And I swear to you, this isn't a prank. When did you last see Parsel?"

There was something wrong, now the dog animagus could tell. "Harry came right after lunch, they hissed for a while. Then he told me he'd go somewhere, as he worded it: 'Mischief calls.' He took the Map with himself. Why?"

"So you can confirm he went to the castle," James said in a dark, bitter tone. "I just hoped you could tell me otherwise."

"Why?!" Sirius demanded to know. "What happened to him?"

Auror James Potter took a seat on the sofa, and looked at the two, slowly moving constellations on the walls and the ceiling. He was avoiding eye contact.

"WHAT HAPPENED?"

"Two senior members of the Board of Hogwarts Governors were having a discussion with Albus, our Head of Department was also present... They all saw when he walked in, and… Sorry, Padfoot, there's no nice way to tell you this. Tom murdered Albus Dumbledore. Crouch, Bagman and Malfoy all gave testimony under Veritaserum."

"What?! He just…"

"He told them that was something he'd been looking forward to for years. That his actions were but deception in plain sight."

"How could he..? How could he do this to me?! To us! To Albus!"

"That's not all, Sirius. He disappeared from Azkaban. If he could kill the headmaster, he might as well come after you. We've always known he has a core of darkness, we just thought it's manageable."

"And how could I think I could handle him?!" Padfoot cried. "I tried my best, and this is what it was worth!"

Prongs took a breath, swallowing his own tears. "He knows how to utilize the entire vanishing network, doesn't he?"

His brother in all but blood nodded. "He even helped place some of the random exit machines. Considering those work both ways, he knows every hidden entrance."

"Is there a way you could shut it all down?"

"What? No! This isn't the Floo Network, Prongs, and even if there was a way, he had been working on this system with me ever since the very start!" Padfoot's face was red with anger as he continued. "But there's one thing we can do. I can tell everyone how to redirect their machines, so no matter where he wants to go, he will end up in this very room. And the two of us will wait for him with raised wands." Sirius wiped his tears from his eyes. "HOW COULD I BE SO BLIND?!"

Without knocking, Lily Potter entered the home as well. Hearing what had happened, she burst out in tears, saying, "Merlin, I can't believe he'd done that! Oh, Padfoot. Please, please forgive me!"

"Forgive YOU?" both wizards asked.

With teary emerald eyes, Lily looked at them, and admitted, "I asked him. No, I begged him! Oh Merlin, dearest Tom!"

"What?"

"Lily, you lost it?"

"Perhaps! After all you've discovered, James, I pleaded with him to make sure Severus doesn't do something that would lead to a life sentence," Lily admitted. Both wizards gaped.

"Tom even offered me the Unbreakable Oath. I refused, but… Sweet, sweet Merlin! Did he kill Albus Dumbledore so that Sev doesn't have to?!"

"That's one thing we might maybe never learn," the auror murmured. "When I heard about what happened, I mounted the fastest broom available and headed to Azkaban. All I met there was a swarm of very angry dementors, telling me they refuse any further contact with that cambion monster."

"He's not a cambion."

"Albus always said that he is. Perhaps not conceived with daemons, but through some other sort of magic from Hell, and he's the person least capable of love… Even he admitted that."

"And he still did more good for Sev than the two of you ever, combined!" Lily yelled.

"I saved his life!"

"He saved his soul!"

"We can't even know if he wasn't already planning this when he gave you his word," Padfoot pointed out.

"Do we know how he disappeared from Azkaban?" Lily asked.

As if answering her question, the vanishing machine in the nearby room popped open. The motorbike rolled into the room, a long dark piece of cloth caught in its hind wheel. A shivering young man fell from its saddle, falling down on the soft carpet, the vehicle dropping on him.


	5. Chapter 5 All is fair in

**Finders, Keepers – All is fair in...**

Tom woke to an old wizard with half-moon spectacles staring jovially at him. The visitor's phoenix was picking at a potted dittany plant in the window, not the least concerned with the Headmaster's current health.

"Mr Riddle-Black, thank you for repairing my oculars. It's not every day that I find myself in dire need of that particular spell."

The young man unwrapped himself from his blanket. "Professor, I meant every word of what I said yesterday. And you're welcome."

He stretched his arms and looked around.

Sirius wasn't in sight yet, from the sounds and swearing he'd been in the workshop, untangling the dementor cloak from the hind wheel, or doing some other necessary repairs to the vehicle.

Fawkes finished his breakfast of dittany and started a lyrical trill. Tom wasn't a fan of phoenix-song, but somehow it felt appropriate for the bird to thank him for keeping his human alive. He hissed a quiet "you're mosssst welcome" to the bird, who gave him a puzzled look before continuing his melodies. "Too bad I don't underssssstand a word of what you're ssssaying," Tom sighed. "You undersssstand me, don't you, sssscarlet fire?" In reply, the phoenix shook his head.

In the far side of his room, Auror James Potter / Prongs / Son / Daddy was smashing his own glasses against the table for what might have been a hundredth time, then repairing them with a first-year spell, just to see the green flash of the charm that had fooled the senior Barty Crouch, Lucius Malfoy, and several others so convincingly that they stated under Veritaserum that they've seen the Killing Curse. Of course, James couldn't add Dumbledore's act of well-timed collapsing. His tears of betrayal, the words of lost faith had been genuine. It was only a moment before he understood his to-be killer's true intentions. Nobody but the two of them knew that Tom's first-ever talk with the great manipulator involved legilimency, thus, none of the witnesses noticed when Tom had hinted that the headmaster should read his mind right before 'murdering' him.

"My wand and knife were confiscated," Tom stated after a while.

"Why don't we visit your fellow Ravenclaw Millicent Bagnold and clean up the misunderstanding?" the headmaster offered. His pace was even, so a combination of fixing spells and skele-gro must have already healed his broken back. Or phoenix tears, Tom suddenly realized. The headmaster had a reason to be fond of his phoenix. "I need some fresh air anyway, I've been answering floo calls and canceling my funeral all morning."

"Can we go on motorbike?" Sirius's adopted son, now an adult in the legal sense, asked.

"To London, Parsel?" Prongs interjected. "I thought you had enough riding it from Azkaban to Out Stack."

"The Out Stack vanishing machine was destroyed," Tom replied. "I had to drive to the Hebridean Reserve. At least that one is guarded."

"By dragons," Prongs nodded. He appeared less than impressed by the entire situation Tom had landed himself in. "Couldn't you just stay there and wait for me to pick you up?"

Tom shook his head, not saying a word.

James, finally accepting the fact that yes, an Avada Kedavra can be imitated with a first-year spell and a broken pair of glasses, straightened up and looked his adopted brother's adopted son in the face. "You knew that we would pick you up, right?"

"Dementors."

"Reason enough," James nodded. Perhaps with a flying motorbike and an all-locks opening knife in his pocket, he wouldn't have waited for the rescue squad either. Talking about a rescue squad... "We would have run as soon as Albus's survival got out." There was the truth, without pointing out the too-painful fact that they did intend to leave the young man in for a lifetime, had he truly committed the crime.

"You purebloods are so gullible," Tom sighed, turning his attention to Fawkes once again. "And after I have witnessed, I cannot blame any of you."

"Thanks, Parsel. And I still apologize."

"Accepted," Tom immediately replied mirthlessly.

Fawkes gave a trill as if urging his own human to join the discussion. The old man just smiled under his beard. He seemed to be more interested in the furniture the house's previous owner had left behind when she moved from Godric's Hollow.

"I should have also remembered that I feature, perhaps prominently, in your worst memory," Son continued. "And nobody deserves to re-live being tortured for all their remaining life."

Now some of the joy returned to the younger wizard's smile. "That's a memory of success, Prongs. Not a bad one."

"May I inquire?" the Headmaster quirked an eyebrow.

Tom nodded. "Because of my time fallout lasting forty-five years, two months and sixteen days, I officially reached the age of seventeen on the idus of this March. The weekend after, I took a two-day course on repelling the Cruciatus curse in a Ministry-approved setting. James gave invaluable help with that."

The headmaster's eyes grew wide.

The auror in the room continued, "He threw me off in about... one hour."

"Fifty-one minutes," Tom corrected him.

That still meant almost one hour, and constant torture, if Tom's stubbornness was anything to go by.

"My boy, I knew you have a very focused mind, but as your teacher, I should have at least been informed."

"And should have talked him out of it," Son agreed. "That's why he wouldn't consult with anyone. But if that wasn't your worst memory, Parsel, then what was it?"

"Falling through time," Tom quietly replied. "Let's talk about anything else."

There was only silence, rarely interrupted by a timid trill from Fawkes.

"Professor Dumbledore, may I ask something school-related?" the young one finally dragged himself out of the bed, and pulled a bag of candy from a nearby drawer. He took a fistful for himself before offering it around. "Lemon drops, anyone?" He even poured half of the candy to a bowl and placed it right next to the long ragged cloak Sirius had halfway untangled from the wheel's spokes. Returning with the rest of the candy still in its bag, Tom continued, "I never had the opportunity to talk about it before."

"I shall reply to the best of my knowledge, my boy," the headmaster asked, accepting the offered sweets with a grin.

"There's a mirror in the abandoned room three doors from your office, and yesterday I noticed how close it is to your personal quarters."

"The Mirror of Erised," was the reply.

"How reliable is that? When I saw myself in it a few months ago, it showed me standing by the treacherous river. I tried to get a closer look, sir, but then I heard Peeves coming, and I didn't feel like chatting with him. But I've been wondering, could it maybe give some real pointers as to where I should start searching for it?"

"For... the treacherous river?" Dumbledore asked back with an incredulous look.

"The very same."

Dumbledore helped himself to another fistful of lemon drops. "I hope you understand that story is widely considered to be no more than a tale." The headmaster sounded much less convincing than usual.

"There's more truth to it than Merlin being in Slytherin," Riddle-Black replied.

"And you want something from Death?" Son asked.

"I want to meet and face him so that I have a chance. I want equal grounds. On a good day, I might even let him keep his scythe."

"You're one ambitious child, Mr Riddle-Black. I know people who would have settled for the three Hallows," the headmaster sighed. "Or, throwing off an Imperius," he added, remembering what he had learnt a few minutes before.

"Our resident Slytherin," Prongs finally added. "Ambitious to the core."

Tom just shrugged, searching his clothes for his wand until he remembered that it had been taken. He was lucky enough that the inkwell was hidden in another pocket. He got dressed quickly. "Now, could we please get going?"

Albus Dumbledore offered him a hand. "Have you ever travelled by phoenix-fire, young man?"

-?-

The faces of Auror Thicknesse and Head of Department Crouch were something of shock and disbelief. The way the two wizards tried to force on a pleased expression and telling Dumbledore how pleased they were to see him alive, was so awkward and hateful and frightened, Tom almost felt it was worth the loss.

Almost.

He got his 7/1 pocket knife back, slightly dented as if they had tried to destroy it, but his wand, his agile and provocative aspen wand with the pinion from a free-soaring turul hawk, was gone. Right after his arrest, it had been snapped in three pieces, and the fragments had been incinerated for good measure. If a wand was beyond repair, this was it.

"You see, Mr Riddle, it was a misunderstanding," Crouch told him. His words sounded like a long, threatening growl.

"By the way, Albus, that blondie from the ICW was asking about you, but wouldn't share what she wanted. I told her that you'd be available later. It's not like you were dead or anything."

The older man just sighed. "No, but the ICW aims to be the death of me." He led Tom out of the office and showed him a less-used passage to Diagon Alley. "It looks like I have to buy a wand for you as well, Mr Riddle-Black."

"I prefer to buy my own things, Professor." And he wanted to leave it at that. He had bought the previous one from Gregorovitch behind his Idiot's back, from the money he had earned for his help with the Vanishing Machines. He had never received pocket money just for the sake of it, and he wasn't going to start accepting galleons now. But what Dumbledore had, perhaps carelessly, mentioned...

"How do you mean, for me 'as well', sir?"

"I fear I lost the loyalty of the old one," Dumbledore admitted after exiting to a quiet corner in the southern part of the Alley. It was an average June workday, sunny, but with very few passers-by. Nobody seemed to wonder how Albus Dumbledore and his supposed murderer were now on speaking terms. "I fully intend to challenge Miss Black as soon as possible and win it back, but I fear it wouldn't be wise to use the Wand against its new master."

"I remember Dad, I mean, Fleamont Potter, saying that wands pick their masters based on personality. If your wand chose you, sir, I can't imagine what it could be seeing in Baby Belly."

Albus Dumbledore stopped as if he had walked into a strong shield-charm in the middle of the deserted street. "Victory," he eventually shared, after struggling with the word for a while.

Now Tom froze to his spot as well. "Wow," he managed after a while. "Just wow. Is that why you were so frightened when I told Belly that I wanted to be the one who kills you?"

Albus nodded, not saying anything, this time.

"I didn't even know I was bluffing!"

That statement earned him another nod from the white-haired man. Maybe he shouldn't have started uncovering his cards to the old wizard, but they were in this together. And, unlike the headmaster, he had yet to impress his newfound ally – and wasn't it amazing to refer to Albus Dumbledore as such?

"We should definitely continue this talk once we get home to Godric's Hollow."

-?-

"So, despite your intentions, you still got your wand from Professor Dumbledore," Quir summed it up, placing his empty tea-cup on the table.

"Well, from his phoenix, I would say," Tom corrected him, emptying his inkwell's contents to the table. "I thought you preferred to be accurate."

"True and true."

"Yew is a symbol of death and rebirth, not bad for someone declared dead in 1936," Idiot finally managed. He was still avoiding eye contact, although his adopted son didn't once bring up his loss of faith.

If anything, Tom appeared to be the more apologetic, although he wouldn't share why. Also, to the casual observer, he was busy with a pot of clear sand, spelling it to always remain dry and warm, exactly as Autumn preferred it. "Nobody bothered to declare me dead. They only gave up searching."

"And what is Headmaster Dumbledore doing in your guest room, if I may ask?" Quirrel asked, handing him the fallback items one by one: a pen, a notebook, muggle and wizarding money, a set of first-aid potions, a bag of Peruvian instant darkness powder, the 7/2 knife. He added a flask of orange juice and a few chocolate bars, because last time those would have come handy.

"He's talking with his family through my heritage pebble," Tom shrugged, sliding down a fistful of pencils with zouwu-mane as well. "He wanted privacy, I wanted a security deposit of equal value. He agreed." With everything packed, Tom put the inkwell on a bookshelf and lifted up the 'security deposit' item in question.

"His wand?!" Quir stared. "I always was curious. What is it made of?"

"Elder wood, thestral tail hair, and a long history of wizards killing each other for and with it," Tom summed up the main features, offering the wand to his schoolmate.

The lanky man held it for a minute or two with deference before passing it on to Sirius. "I can't imagine I would want anything that can get me murdered," he admitted.

"People kill for much less, nowadays," Sirius hummed, quickly passing the wand back to Tom.

"Which reminds me! How was Azkaban?" Quir asked with open curiosity.

Idiot gave a quiet whimper.

"At first, I got very dizzy. I'm not sure if time travel was that bad for the first time, or back then I just didn't know where I was going. Now, I was so nauseated I didn't even notice the cold. There are some pretty strong heating charms because the entire fortress would just freeze over without them, but, yuck, dementors breathe cold. But then the sense of falling was replaced by the purest urge to just GO. Perhaps I was remembering the time I wanted to get away from the orphanage. I wasn't exactly fighting it, I had the Siriusly Enchanted 7/2 knife in my inkwell... Hey, Padfoot! Has anybody told you that you cannot lock the door back with the knife? I didn't even reach the staircase when a sightless dementor floated straight into the open door! It crashed with a bang so loud that I almost felt sorry!"

The faintest smile appeared under Sirius's well-kept moustache.

"Now what came after, was interesting. Do you remember we read that there are unspecified further curiosities in the basement? That's totally true! Imagine something like a firedrake, but the size of a Horntail, or maybe bigger. I think I heard an ice giant battle cry. There was a curious green jellyfish floating in the air, and then a full-size fire daemon broke out. It was like overheated steel, its entire body! And a necrophage. Huge, skull-like, with octopus tentacles for its teeth, and it just started to tear up the prison graveyard. I need to pack a camera next time."

"From what I heard, the dementors told Minister Bagnold that they won't ever let you on their island again," chuckled Sirius.

"Well, yes, those were a bit upset at the time. I know I was missing out the opportunity of a lifetime, but I'm no Gryffindor, so when all six hundred of them were coming my way I just unpacked the bike and hit full throttle."

"And with the full throttle you hit a dementor," Padfoot noted. "Undressed the poor creature, actually."

"It didn't get out of my way. Really, they could use more eyes."

"Mr Black, how do you mean Tom 'undressed' a dementor?" Quir queried.

"I brought the cloak home, accidentally. I was looking ahead, didn't notice I was dragging four meters of ragged linen."

Quir burst out laughing. "Tom? I suggest you really don't try and go back there."

"You're not the first to advise that. Anyway, do you stay for dinner?"

-?-

He stayed for breakfast, as well. The three of them spent the night studying the stolen dementor cloak, brainstorming about its possible further use. The most ragged parts were chopped down, in their new state resembling some undefined potion ingredient. Quir sorted these into vials by size, and labelled those with his neat handwriting. Five long stripes had been cut out for Tom's 'never climbing all those stairs again' project, and were fused with his school robes in a fashion not unlike a whole-body harness. They made the wearer bounce, rather than float, but that was all right for a prototype and they had two more months to find the perfect pattern. Quir suggested they also prepare a quidditch robe set in a similar manner so that a player falling from high wouldn't possibly land in freefall.

Sleeping then off the whole-night creativity, Tom shambled down to 'breakfast' in the afternoon. Quir was talking to somebody at the floo, Sirius was still only giving one-word replies, and Autumn was still at Hogwarts. The young man pointed his new wand at a book he'd come across in a muggle store in London, and moved it to his bedroom.

The bone-coloured yew wand was powerful, he noted again, but more reserved than his late aspen with turul pinion had been. This was more of a Slytherin wand. Ollivander had warned him that each wand has a different personality and takes time to get used to. It was a necessity, however, to have a new wand when the old had been snapped and incinerated. Grief could only get him so far.

Curiously, he reached for his inkwell, wondering if the Stone could show him the wand he was grieving, only to remember that the Hallow was with Albus Dumbledore in the guest room, and, temporarily, he had the Elder Wand instead. Not its loyalty, only the wood and core in themselves.

He gave it a swing, and could feel the powerful item connecting with his own magic, recognizing the master of a similar object, but not yielding to his will. It looked majestic, it looked tempting, and even without its loyalty it had a certain grace that other borrowed items lack. Testing, he conjured water to a teapot and hit it with a heating charm. It boiled like normal, and when he threw the leaves in his mug, he wondered if a less observant wizard could tell the difference between an own, well-matched wand, and this elder one, giving its power with reluctant grace.

Then he remembered what Dumbledore told him in Diagon Alley. This wand cannot be used against Bellatrix Black, as she was its current master.

He didn't need a wand that cannot be used against Black Belly! Any wand was better than this one, even those Padfoot had made of muggle wood soaked in some potion. Treacherous thing.

He glanced at the guest room's door, noting the 'please don't disturb' sign conjured on it. Suspiciously, because he had heard about a Hallow once being stolen overnight, he cast a 'Hominum revelio' with the yew wand. One person alive, it indicated, and three shadows with him. For the first time, Tom felt sorry for the great Albus Dumbledore.

He pocketed both wands and sat down to drink his tea. He had something else to sort out, not now, but eventually, he would have to. When he told Son and later, Quir about his Azkaban adventures, he had left something out. The worst monster he had witnessed wasn't any of the daemons he had found in the basement. It wasn't one of the guards, either.

After the memory of falling through time, he had seen himself. The other himself.

That wizard was a weak and miserable shadow, now, but he was also the cause of everyone else's misery. Padfoot, his own adopted father who had made all the difference, was imprisoned for one thing and feeling guilty for another. Peter was hiding as a pet rat, without anyone he could have talked to. Quir was an uncertain, weak-willed, stuttering man, caught in Dumbledore's web. Remus was wearing ragged clothes, and looking up at the waxing moon with horror in his lifeless eyes. Harry was being raised by that horrible muggle walrus Petunia had managed to get married to.

All this because of the other Tom Marvolo Riddle, the one he would have been if not raised by Idiot and the Marauders.

He closed his eyes, sipping his tea, focusing on the present. He DID have Padfoot. He WAS family to the Potters. He had SAVED Dumbledore's life, not made it more miserable than his losses had already had.

He put down his mug and stared out the window. How could he ever talk about what he had witnessed, what the other Tom Marvolo Riddle, who was not Riddle-Black, had done and had become? Not a chance, but he could see to making a lasting difference here. He was the most ambitious of the Slytherin bloodline since the school's foundation, and he was motivated like nobody before him.

He would make a difference here, he decided, even though he couldn't tell how. Maybe helping the old meddler to win his wand's loyalty back could be a good start, and he will see what can be done next.

After he finished his tea, Tom stared at his mug. The wet leaves formed a familiar pattern at the bottom: an equilateral triangle, its altitude line, and its incircle.

The Deathly Hallows symbol.

-?-

Albus Dumbledore finally emerged from the guest room late in the afternoon, to the sounds of holy chaos, young Quirrel putting a huge tome back to its shelf, and two Blacks arguing. Fawkes was gone, maybe at Hogwarts, maybe living his private phoenix life and building a nest somewhere.

He rubbed his forehead. When he had last checked, Regulus Black had been a blood purist and Kreacher had been the very reason this place had apparation wards specifically set against elves. Now Sirius was trying in vain to get the elf in question outside, while everybody else was loudly reminding him that Regulus here was willing to give crucial information, on the condition that he can have Kreacher with him at all times.

"Tom, my boy, could I please get my wand back?"

They exchanged their Hallows quietly.

"Professor, I'll wait for one hour for everybody to quiet down, we're at 28 minutes. After that, we can start discussing the siege. The story so far: in your absence, the purists had moved in to Hogwarts and are planning to use the school as a fortress in the next two months and wipe us out. They also brought some sort of reinforcement, of which Regulus has no information, but he guesses it's a similar-minded group from the Continent. Furthermore, we have Crouch's motive: he made an Unbreakable Oath to his late wife that he'd help Barty Junior if he ever finds the woman to pass on his bloodline with, and now he cannot back out of the deal. Junior's to-be fiancée, Belly, and her family demand his support against us. Regulus says Druella also threw in some flasks of Amortenia herself, to ensure his continued support, while slowly poisoning her own husband.

The headmaster gravely nodded.

"My sentiments, too," Tom agreed with him. "Well, it's easy for me, I won't ever do anything out of blind love, be it real or potion-made."

"You're still missing out a wonderful experience, Mr Riddle-Black."

"Not my choice to be born a cambion," Tom shrugged. "Have you ever been in love, headmaster? Was it any good?"

There was an uncomfortably long silence, even with Lily joining the quarrel on Regulus's side while James supported Idiot on full volume. Quirrel was trying to get the history out of the incriminated elf, who was, however, too busy protecting his master from the two other wizards' spells. Regulus didn't even lift his wand, although it might have been taken from him already.

"I loved only one," the headmaster finally replied. "In the end, it wasn't exactly beneficial for either of us. But I'm still glad to have met him."

The last words were lost to the background noise, Tom wasn't sure he heard them right. The way his headmaster was now staring down his wand answered his question anyway.

No, love wasn't necessarily a good thing.

His musings were interrupted by one of the muggle neighbours. As the only person not preoccupied with Gryffindor emotions and consequences thereof, he went to open the door. "Good afternoon, Mrs Murphy. Can I help you? Please, ignore the noise, Idiot's brother is visiting."

The muggle woman didn't seem less upset than those already in the room. Wasn't it for the elf and the Statute of Secrecy, Tom could have just led her in to join the mess.

"Mr Dursley ringed me not five minutes ago," she started. "He wanted to talk to James or Lily, and Harry says they came over here."

"Yes, and currently they're on opposite sides," Tom replied. "As you can probably hear."

"Mr Dursley said it's dead urgent."

"I'll see which one of them I can send to call him back," the young wizard promised, glad (not for the first time) that their own telephone landline hadn't survived being connected to a magical household. They needed a breath, once in a while, for Merlin's sake!

He closed the door, then cast a Sonorus on himself. "We are less than three hours from a full moon," he announced, "and Vernon Dursley just phoned Mrs Murphy because something is worse than usual."

He got everybody's attention with that statement. Lily hurried after the helpful neighbour, while the wizards quit arguing aloud and restrained themselves to quiet death-glares.

"Who is Vernon Dursley?" the Black heir asked.

"No idea," Quir whispered back.

"His son is a friend of ours," Sirius stated.

"Kreacher can imagine what sort of a friend this shame of a firstborn has among the muggles, oh, yes he can..."

"You wrinkled pair of bat wings, skip that."

"Master Sirius has been disowned, yes he has, after turning his back on the noble and most ancient family. Kreacher doesn't have to take orders from him as long as any other Black is alive, no, Master Sirius cannot..."

"SHUT UP!"

Regulus just rolled his eyes. This banter was old news to him.

Lily stormed back into the room, her face red, her eyes tearful. "Pet and Dudley have been abducted on their way home. Two wizards just grabbed them and apparated away."

"And we're three hours from the full moon," James paled. "Merlin, they know we're planning something!"

Regulus and Kreacher exchanged a meaningful look, and the elf held on to his master's almost-white hands reassuringly.

"Have I missed something?" Quir asked.

"Ehm, yes," Tom admitted. "Dudley is a werewolf. Quite a strong one, well fed and regularly given recovery potions."

"He doesn't have magic on his own, but that doesn't bother his curse," Sirius added.

Tom cast a cannonball spell, ending all the chatter in the room.

"All right, so let me sum up what we know! We have the location of the purists' base near Hogsmeade. They have at least one hostage, presumably hidden in the small lake next to their headquarters. This hostage is a muggle woman, but dear to the most of us, and Dudley will also do anything he can to keep her safe – including, from himself. It will be full moon tonight, which also offers a time for several rituals, among others, the modification of the wards around Hogwarts. We need to get inside the castle before midnight to prevent that. Please note, everyone, that we will be expected, and we'll need to face at least one werewolf. Of what Regulus told us, the current, temporary wards will go down at sunset, but the anti-apparation block remains. That means, we have two hours and a half to prepare ourselves, which isn't much, and on occasion, we will be outnumbered about one to ten."

There was a low murmur about Merlin's various body parts.

"We can suppose that the Ministry is deeply involved, deep enough that they monitor apparation or floo for the purists, so if we don't want to kindly warn them, all that remains is a Vanishing Machine connection between this house and the Hog's Head. From there, we will have to take brooms."

The headmaster gave a quiet grunt at that inn's mention.

"The alternative route would be taking flight from here," Tom immediately offered. "It's not like Hogwarts would be on the far side of Scotland, if a thestral can make it in thirty minutes, so can a Nimbus or a Cleansweep."

"I still remember where that bit of info came from," James murmured.

"Can't you get other help?" Regulus quietly suggested. "I mean, you have the Weasleys, you have the McKinnons, where will they be?"

"We couldn't filter all the spies out. Somebody of those two families gave Mundungus away. Until we don't know who and how, we'll keep the traitors off our backs. I would invite Professor Flitwick over, but he's in Amazonia and wouldn't make it back in time."

"Going like this is suicide," Quirrel pointed out.

"You will be staying here, standing ready with healing potions, and not letting Regulus out of the house," Tom declared.

Quir just nodded, already used to Tom making the decisions for him. It just wouldn't work any other way, and he wasn't a warrior, to be fair.

"What we are armed with against werewolves, are Peruvian powder and muzzle necklaces. Everybody remember, the necklace needs to be placed on the human form, and tied by muggle means, and it doesn't protect anyone from scratching. The powder blocks out the full moon, but its effects last only as long as the werewolf is in the cloud of the product. Lily, you will need to dose it to purses, of which everyone will carry at least three."

"That will be done in a few minutes," Lily acknowledged.

"Padfoot, the two of us will do reconnaissance around Hogsmeade and the purist camp. Prongs, you have the forest."

"Just look what our little Parsel has grown up to," James fondly noted. "I remember when we were teaching you the first pranks."

Padfoot obediently nodded, still unwilling to start a conversation with his son. Instead, he was just glaring at Kreacher, who in turn glared him back.

Then, only then, did the cambion turn to Albus Dumbledore. "Headmaster, we're going to besiege the new and the old nests of the purists. It would be an honour if you joined, and there's a good chance Belly will also be there in either place. I'm no longer your pawn, sir. I invite you along, as equals as Ignotus and Death."

The faintest twinkle appeared around the old wizard's eyes. "I never heard that expression anywhere outside Godric's Hollow."

"Are you coming?"

"Yes."

"Good. James, please come with us _fully dressed_."

Only then did he drop back to his seat, and stared into the tea mug that hadn't been cleaned yet, and the leaves dried onto its glazed inner surface. The Wand-Stone-Cloak pattern was clear, as if an eye was looking at him expectantly.

Yes, three of them will be enough.

-?-

James stood still, waiting for the purist woman to move his wand from his generic direction. The witch must have known somebody was watching her, but the Cloak of Invisibility didn't give away its wearer as a Disillusionment would have. Only his two huge antlers were visible, as visible as a pair of appendages can be on an invisible adult stag.

He couldn't move. He could see, however, smell the air, taste the winds.

He could, inwardly, curse the potioner of the opposing party.

When the witch turned around, he broke out in a sprint towards the nearest cover and returned to his human form.

"Sirius Black," he whispered. "Sirius Black!"

"I'm here, Prongs," came the answer, just as quietly. "I can't see you. Are you still cloaked?"

"Yes. There's a complication. They have Felix felicis."

"That can't be good," Padfoot's voice replied.

"Put that mirror down, Idiot," Tom warned them. "You're obscuring your own view. Son, is your purist having extra good luck now?"

"I think she was in the coming-down phase when I spotted her," Son whispered. "But she's ready to take another gulp if I make one loud step."

"The same vial must be passed when they change guards," Padfoot's voice came from the mirror, although the item was held under James's Cloak and therefore, it was invisible.

"James, come back to the tree as quietly as you can," Tom called. "I have news as well."

"Got it."

On the other side of the now blank mirror, the adopted father was looking at his adult son, struggling with himself to continue the conversation Prongs had, thankfully, interrupted. It had been far too awkward for both of them.

"If there's anyone to be blamed, it's my mother," Riddle-Black stated, his voice colder than usual. "Do you remember the fat muggle in Hangleton? According to him, my father had said she'd dosed him with Amortentia. I think, if the dosage is enough to completely rip a man of his own will, it does count as a Dark deed and it might have worked as a daemonic interference. And there you have a cambion."

"The problem is not you being who you are. It's my disability to act as who I should have been. I should have acted as a father and should have had faith in you. I failed there."

"You did not, Padfoot. You've been my father for thirteen years now, when my so-called real father simply ran away from the misadventure that's me. My mother died the day I was born, and I have had the Stone for two years now and not once did she bother to show up, no matter how I called. She never cared about me. You did. You're the one who now overreacts a few minutes of simple stupidity."

Sirius nodded with a put-upon smile. "You call me Idiot for a good reason. But then, what is it? You've changed. You laugh, but it's not as..." He struggled to find the word.

"Care-free. Yes, but it's not because of you. It's because of me." And he would talk about it, once he found the courage. Eventually. Perhaps sometime after Harry's birthday. Or after his graduation.

Idiot would have replied to that, something bitter and self-ironic, but a quiet hiss drew their attention.

It was a metallic-shining green boomslang, who had once belonged to a potion-maker in Hogsmeade until he was discovered to be a 'squib' – with his magic missing, his skin wasn't of any use in potions, so he had been dumped to the forest. He had made a home here, but he was more than eager to help the two parselmouth wizards when Tom had politely requested his help.

"I assssssked around the ssssssmall lake," he reported. "There wasssss a pair that wassss not a pair. The male sssssspoke to the inhabitantssss. Thosssse got angry with him and thsssssrew him in the water. The female wassss thsssrown there asss soon assss she landed here. A potion wasssss then poured on the ssssurface. It ssssssmellsssss horrible. The pair tried to come thsssssrough it but couldn't."

"Try to find out who the male issssss," Sirius requested. "The female issssss a sssssissster to a friend of ourssssss."

"Assss you wish. Jussssssst make the inhabitantssssss leave thissssss placsssse. They make sssssso much noissssse."

With that, the boomslang left.

"No word of Dudley," Sirius noted.

"We will hear from him in an hour," Tom noted with a grimace. "Too bad we cannot make the watch-witch drink up all the Felix without exposing ourselves. I hate that potion."

"You wouldn't, if you had a vial in your hand."

Tom turned around, only to look into a pair of clear blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles.

"Professor, is there still no word of Fawkes?"

"No, there isn't. I fear he had been killed, in which case he won't be able to fly until his feathers grow in again."

There was a moment of silence, and a deer walked to the three of them as if nothing was amiss.

"It's a small cottage, really, but well positioned," he started, once he took back his human form. "Surrounded partially by the lake, a rock, and a weekend-house that's warded against tresspassing its ground but a broom can easily pass above it."

The Professor blinked twice, murmured a "Should have known," then settled on the fallen log the Blacks were sitting on.

"There are about eight of them inside," Padfoot shared. "All wearing expensive garment, but no uniform. All of them must be well-trained in duels, but they make stupid mistakes like leaving the windows unwarded."

"So perhaps not the ones who should pay for killing Mundungus," Tom concluded. "They have one watch at a time, who's armed with a vial of Felix felicis. We should either make a trap and disable the guard before she could drink from it, or we provoke a gulp and wait for the coming-down. We cannot attack someone who's armed like that."

"We're at a disadvantage," the headmaster agreed.

"There are two hostages, a woman who must be Petunia, and a man who was brought here separately, and spoke back to the purists before being thrown in the water," Tom continued. "Then the surface was covered in something the snakes refer to as a foul substance."

"Considering this place will be full with werewolves in an hour, perhaps it's safer for the hostages to stay down there," Sirius mused aloud, staring at the last golden-orange edges of the summer clouds. "I hope they had the decency to apply a bubblehead on the hostages."

"The boomslang mentioned a house elf too, that one can be a problem."

"Malfoy has one, I've seen him before. I have an idea, but that'll have to wait. We should start with the school," James said. "Only, that seems to be what they're expecting."

"And that's where Belly Bella is," Tom added. "Marauders, would you agree to show your parchment to a wizard whose interest is normally the opposite of yours?"

Sirius and James exchanged a long glimpse, then James pulled out the Marauder's Map from his pocket. He pointed his wand without saying anything, then handed it to the headmaster. "It was created with Peter whom we haven't heard about for long, and Remus whom we haven't seen in years. And it's not for reinforcing school rules."

"Knowing you, I guessed as much. Oh! Amazing art of magic, my dear friends. I recognize a Homunculus charm at its core...?"

"Find Bella as quickly as you can," Tom Marvolo Riddle-Black said. "Perhaps it's really the best if we all go with you. James, you certainly. Just keep the Map safe, will you? And along with it, our Headmaster?"

They were almost ready to sneak back to the Hog's Head when the magicless boomslang finally returned. Tom and Padfoot hissed with him for a few minutes, during which James was just making faces.

"I have no idea how Padfoot managed to learn that language," he admitted. "It just sounds like a leaking pipe to me."

"Out of love for his child," Dumbledore replied. "Auror Potter, you have no idea what people are willing to do for their loved ones."

Now it was Tom's turn to roll his eyes. Despite being a parselmouth, he was still capable of understanding human speech, after all.

"Wait a moment, I don't understand that!" Padfoot suddenly straightened. "How did that serpent mean, 'the male has different eyes'?"

And that was the moment their plan of besieging the school first went out the window.

-?-

"By the description, it must be Draught of Despair." Regulus Black sat down on a sofa, his house-elf immediately moving to sit on one knee. "Nothing alive can reach through its surface. And it horribly weakens the wizard who drinks it, but there's no other way to dispose of it."

"Let me look it up," Quir said, moving to the house just across the street to the Potter Manor, then returning with an old copy of Most Potente Potions. After reading what it had about the Draught, he quirked his lips in a bitter-sarcastic smile. "At least they won't have to worry about the thirst part of the effect."

"Who do you mean by 'they'?" Tom stirred.

"The hostages. If one of ours drinks the potion..."

"I volunteer!"

"Headmaster, no. You need to face Bella! In Hogwarts! Your own school!"

"No, I will go with the hostage rescue team, Tom, because I am no pawn of yours either."

"Remember your wand!"

"There are things more important than my wand!"

"Not tonight!" Tom thundered.

"May I continue?" Quir quietly asked.

After a reluctant nod from both wizards, Quirinus Quirrel said, "We wouldn't even have time for one of ours to drink the potion with everybody else covering the drinker's back. That place is guarded, and add werewolves - there must be more than one. So we need to somehow set the hostages free underwater, send them the message to drink it from under, and then, covering their escape will still be tricky if the guard has the Felix felicis."

"I'll make sure they won't. And after the hostages are safe, I can go back to my school and fix my wand problem," Albus nodded.

"And we will all be backing you," Lily continued. "I hope you don't plan to leave me alone with my sister!"

"My offer to protect Snape still stands," Tom assured her. "Headmaster, why the change in the plans?"

"Tom, my boy. I know what was in that letter I didn't get to read."

"I have a feeling you're leaving something out," Tom said, swallowing a lemon drop whole.

"So are you, my boy. How are you so sure the five of us, plus one snake on the inside, can defeat about fifty witches and wizards?"

Tom just tightened his grip on the inkwell. "Well, I have an idea how I can message the hostages. If anyone has a better one, please, share that now."

"Better that WHAT?" Regulus asked. Tom didn't reply, just asked everyone coming to meet him by the tree log, and prepare a diversion. Quir and Regulus mutually agreed to sit it out at Godric's Hollow, one because he wouldn't be trusted and the other because he didn't consider himself a warrior by far. Dumbledore, again, promised to take care of the luck potion, ensuring his spot on the hostage rescue team.

-?-

The Sun completely set by the time Tom rejoined his allies, levitating something human-shaped and earthy-smelling behind himself.

He read through the letter once again before spelling it waterproof. 'You need to drink the potion on the surface to cross it. I'll be watching. When you hear our signals, it's time to run. Tom.'

He wasn't sure how much running could be done if the potion would only be shared between two people, but it was better than letting his friends drink it. He estimated the water surface to be about three hundred squaremeters: even if the potion layer on it was as thin as the one-hundredth of a millimeter, that made three liters of the draught. One and a half liter per hostage.

What puzzled him more was the sudden change in Dumbledore's behavior. He must have known who the male hostage was, and wouldn't share. Keeping secrets wasn't unusual for him, but this rashness made no sense. But then again: Gryffindors. He should have gotten used to such recklessness by now.

And it wasn't like his own plan was any bit on the sane side, either.

"Tom, tell me that's not poor Mundungus Fletcher!"

"The one and only. He's the freshest wizard I could find."

"TOM!"

"Quit that, Idiot, you won't be the one who has to bite a cadaver that's been in the ground for four days. Yuck! I understand why some people just make new ones..."

After a last sanitary spell (he had to kill all germs and bacteria in the corpse anyway, so that it could pass the Draught of Despair) Tom steadied himself and finalized the magic that bound the late Mundungus Fletcher's corpse to his will.

Then, with a quick Levicorpus, he threw the body as far as he could from himself and watched as it started crawling towards the lake on its own, the letter softly glowing in his hand. The guard (a long-haired wizard this time) didn't seem to notice.

It was a bizarre sensation. The inferus had no own will, of course, it was driven by plain magic that was a mixture of Tom's and the body's previous owner's. It had some instincts, however, and so, the ability to crawl on the lake bottom wherever it detected a living creature. Tom felt an alien presence in the magic that fused him to the decomposing body, and noted it was a powerful wizard who now took control of the same corpse, animating the late Fletcher to undo his ties, then letting go. No longer needed, the corpse, as it would be expected from anyone dead for several days already, stopped moving and peacefully floated to another part of the lake bottom.

Tom murmured the text of his letter, trying to guess how far the unknown wizard was into the reading. He wondered how it would have gone if the inferus had found Petunia first.

He spotted something white... no, pale blond... in the water. The sun had already set, the moon was not yet up (yet...) so it was hard to make out anything except for the stirring of the surface.

The pale phenomenon disappeared. Another, smaller wave appeared next to it, which sank back after but a few gulps. The hostages chewing themselves out of the trap didn't seem to be going fast enough.

In a bush not far from the cottage, Lily started feeling into the wards. She had always been good with charms and had an instinct for runes, so in the end, she had more than compensated for her muggle upbringing. She didn't grow up with pre-existing wards protecting her from the earliest childhood, she had to learn to build them for herself.

Soon, she hand-signaled that there were four wards she counted on her way to the cottage, two on the area as a whole, one especially against intruders, and one to keep anyone inside. Of these, at least the last one indicated other people in here, so she went to search the building herself. Or maybe she just needed an excuse not to be staring at the lake, in which her own sister had been trapped.

Dumbledore aimed his wand at the vial of Felix felicis in the guard's hand. Summoning the tiny bottle was impossible even for him, but transfiguring it to have a small hole on the bottom was not beyond his abilities. The wand was fighting him, he could tell... But one, tiny hole was enough...

The strange whiteness appeared again, just under the surface. The rest of the lake was deceivingly quiet, its waves washing the shore in the soft summer night breeze. The whiteness sank. It surfaced again, as the wizard must have steeled himself to continue. He had been through worse.

He had done worse.

Just outside the cottage, Lily reappeared in the company of a large man with a bushy long beard.

"So there's our leak," the headmaster nodded gravely. "Rubeus works at the Hebridean Dragon Reserve, same place as young Mr Weasley. He has a heart of gold, but he loves experimenting with dangerous creatures, and this makes him very easy to blackmail. Also, he cannot keep his mouth shut."

"If those flaming poultries are anything to go by, he has some of his pets with him," Sirius noted. "James, see if you can solve the house elf problem."

"On it," the auror grinned from the mirror.

There was a distant howl, perhaps that of a real wolf, or one of those beautifully lethal creatures born from an infected wizarding couple. The moon was a tiny shimmering spot on the almost cloudless horizon.

The wizard with long brown hair stopped, not yet noticing his Felix felicis leaking. He shared a few words with another purist, who then called his elf just so that he would berate the tiny one, not knowing he was making a target out of himself.

"Oh, Ludricius," Prongs sighed with a grin, watching the blond wizard, ready for the opportunity, wand already raised.

His target was focused on the tiny creature so much that finally, for just one moment, his own shield dissolved. It wouldn't have mattered, had James not been an auror, trained to react to such temporary advantages. He cast a Confundus, then watched in delight as the blond pureblood removed his left glove and put it on the elf's head like some clown's hat.

The moment the soft leather piece of clothing made contact with the magical servant's skin, the elf laughed out in sudden joy and vanished in a blink. The pureblood laughed, seemingly along with the creature, under the Confundus spell's effect.

Still trying in vain to figure Dumbledore out, Tom checked on the other side of the cottage. There were a few, chicken-like creatures, occasionally throwing sparks and their plumage flaring up, especially the tail. He remembered the monsters in the basement or Azkaban, one of those might have been bred to normal poultry, or at least, nothing else came to his mind.

The potion was still floating on the lake. Time and again, the whiteness continued to drink up the potion on the surface, then sank back to the deep. That liquid smelled foul even to the wizard who had just created his first-ever inferus tonight. Despite being an (honorary) Ravenclaw, he didn't want to know what ingredients had been used to create that draught. And three liters of it!

The whiteness disappeared for longer than usual, and Tom could tell Albus was sweating. Whatever had thrown him off balance, it had thrown him off for good.

Lily quit her quiet chatter with the large beast-handler, looking in Tom's direction, asking an unspoken question. After some hesitation, Tom pointed his yew wand at a tree that could have been a good vantage point, just outside the wards, but behind which none of them had been hiding.

There was a small pop. The guard immediately alerted the others: somebody had just apparated in here.

"Or disapparated out," the voice of Lucius Malfoy pointed out. "Perhaps just a spy got cold feet after the howl. I told you we cannot trust Barty's wards."

Tom paid attention, hoping to catch a word how these wizards intended to keep themselves safe from the furry-cursed individuals. The sole answer he got was the sight of brooms against one side of the cottage.

"You are correct, Lucius," a witch cooed, "Nobody is there. By the way, have you seen Dobby?"

There was another pop, one a bit louder than the previous one.

"Are we... We're not under attack, right?"

Tom rolled his eyes. This had to be Selwyn, from the sound of it. Some Slytherins were actually proud to be witless cowards, and called everybody not like them 'blood traitors'. He pointed his wand and cast another much-reserved cannonball spell.

From that point, it was a music of escalating chaos. Malfoy grabbed the vial of Felix felicis from the guard's hand, and bellowed about it leaking. Really, it was almost gone by now, only leaving the last few drops on Malfoy's hand. "Quick, Cissa, drink it and leave!"

"What? I can't leave you!"

"If we're lucky, I'll go!"

"What about me?"

"Dobby! Here, you creep!"

"The family tomes!"

"If Crouch hears about this, we won't hear the end of it..."

"There's a GRIM!"

"Travers, just side-along with Cissa, and don't you dare thinking about anything!"

"Like he was capable of thinking," Tom growled to himself.

The purists seemed to be kissing the Malfoy patriarch's hand one after the other as they drank up the spilled potion. Those few drops were just enough to get them out to safety, and Tom hoped this was their conclusion as well. He'd seen the purists taking tomes, ritual tools, a cauldron with a half-brewed potion and some ingredients.

Albus Dumbledore, belying his age and his back-break just two days before, ran to the water and grabbed a frail shape, pulling it to the shore, with the potion finally giving way. Sirius jumped in the lake in his dog form, dog-swimming until he found Petunia, then pulling her ashore as well. He shook the foul-smelling water off his fur and retreated back to the shadows.

Lily and the large one called Rubeus joined her instead, drying and warming up the abused muggle. A flame-chicken moved out of the previously warded area, and immediately set a patch of dry grass on fire. A stag stepped closer and returned to his human form again. Two people were talking to some snakes under a tree that's branches formed long arms with even longer fingers.

Finally able to walk again, the muggle woman turned around, glaring at the headmaster holding the frail, shivering, inert body of the wizard who just drank the potion, all by himself.

"That's so abnormal," she berated them.

-?-

By the time Lily retrieved her broom and took off with her sister, the cottage was on fire. Prongs and Padfoot were talking to the gigantic human, whose 'fluffy little birds, they'd never harm anyone' were still lose and the fire was spreading rapidly. Tom was the only one trying to put it out, but the flame-chickens were moving quickly and started it anew. Eventually, instead of trying to collect the birds one by one, he cast a complicated property fence that would let mammals and reptiles cross it anytime, but not birds. Charms had always been his favourite subject at school anyway.

Eventually, Son managed to convince Rubeus to chose an island by the Hebridean reserve and move his feathery menaces so that they wouldn't be a danger to anyone else, he even promised to cast Ministry-approved security charms on the chosen area. If the birds wouldn't be used as possible weapons, then he might still get away with keeping them. In exchange, the auror demanded that Rubeus alerted him if any other animals of his get kidnapped, no matter how illegal they are, and how harmless their 'rightful' owner claims them to be.

In exchange for James covering for him and his fire-chicks, Robeus shared that little he had picked up while his birds were held by the purists. The hostage wizard was some sort of a foreigner, and the purists tried to cajole him into joining them. He had only replied something in maybe Norse, and by the reactions, his answer was anything but favorable.

"We have a PROBLEM!" Padfoot suddenly noticed.

"What?"

"The apparation block is still holding us in, and all our brooms have been torched."

"And I can't recall the purists setting up a vanishing machine here, either," Tom grimaced.

As the wizards had already discovered when they did the reconnaissance, the cottage was surrounded by the lake from south and southeast, on the other sides, there were a large rock and a well-warded neighbouring weekend-house, the wards of which couldn't be undone in one night. That property had been very easy to fly over, but sheer impossible to walk through.

Padfoot and Tom glimpsed at each other, and without anything spoken, began to spell an alpinist ladder on the rock.

Seeing that his adopted father didn't need belaying, Tom went to collect the two older wizards from the lake shore.

The frail one was just sitting in the grass, his white-pale hair recently trimmed, his white (white-ish?) eyebrows in a frown as he was watching Dumbledore with quiet dismay. In the darkness, only one eye seemed to be reflecting the distant chicken-fire, as if the other was constantly in the shadows, or several shades darker...

Tom suddenly remembered the squib boomslang's words: 'different eyessss'. And Dumbledore claiming that the hostage was more important than his wand.

Of course, the hostage was more important than any wand! Not worth to let the purists have Hogwarts for the entire summer, however.

"Sie sind mein Held," he whispered to the potion-incapacitated man, then grabbed him by the shoulder, and put him in the inkwell without further hesitation. "It will keep him safe and warm. We must get going, Professor."

"He said there's no atonement matching his crimes," the headmaster shared, looking lost and relieved at the same time. "He repents, honestly repents. Do you understand what that means? Do you, Tom?"

"Problems that can wait until the night is over," Parsel replied, offering his hand to the old teacher to help him up. "This here was just storage for spare tomes and a kitchen for a five-o'clock tea, for the elite. The rest must be in the school by now. And I don't know how we could get in there without Lily dismantling the neighbor's wards for us, the other option is that we swim."

The headmaster looked around, barely taking in the fire damage. "I already got what I wanted all these decades."

"All right, but then don't complain about me doing something my way," Tom decided. If he could maybe transfigure something into a boat... Paddling would be too slow, but conjuring a current and some wind could get them past the apparation block quickly enough. The inferus was too slow to pull the boat, although doubtlessly strong. Poor Fletcher, he never matched well with water in his life...

Before he would have decided, Padfoot joined him. "The rock is very easy to climb, and guess what? Hogwarts can be seen from the top of it. About three kilometers, I'd say. We could zip-line there."

"Let me take a look," Tom immediately jumped up, climbing the rock without even using the conjured ladder. "You're a genius, Idiot!" he bellowed, once he reached the top. "Headmaster, Prongs, come up here! Isn't it the VIEW?"

Indeed it was. With the flame-poultry setting the field below them on fire, and Rubeus trying to round them up in vain, and with the starry sky above them, it was a breath-taking sight. The castle wasn't as lit as during a school term, pointing out where the intruders were setting up their warding ritual. The large lake was reflecting the moonlight, every wave visible, every leaf of the nearby shore dancing in the breeze.

And, of course, they could also hear the werewolves howling between them and the castle.

"All right," Tom decided after a while. "I know this place is visible from the Ravenclaw tower's window, I cannot see it in the dark but I can picture it clearly enough for a spell."

"These rocks will do fine," Padfoot stated, pointing at the two boulders of limestone next to where they were standing.

"What are you two talking about?" Son queried. His question was ignored.

Idiot and Parsel cast mild sticking charms on their left palms, then held on to each other's wrists. They pointed their wands in the opposite directions, Sirius on one boulder, Tom (supposedly) at Ravenclaw tower.

"Incarcero ferrata!" they both yelled, and thick cables shot out of both their wands, tying themselves on whatever they've been pointed at. Tom's strength alone was not enough to keep him from being pulled down by the weight, but Sirius was holding him by the left wrist, tight, secure.

With enormous effort, they pulled their wands together, tips eventually touching. Their cables fused seamlessly as if they've been conjured as one. They sighed in relief: their line was ready.

The cottage, its own wards no longer held up by anyone, started to burn down, the collapsing dry woodlogs providing eerie background noise.

"I'll go first," Padfoot offered. "Securocarcero ipsum!"

A climbing harness appeared on his body, and a trolley with a two-wheeled pulley connected him to the freshly conjured cable.

"You'll need to go upwards," Prongs remarked.

Padfoot nodded. "Reverso!" With that, he lifted up his legs and disappeared into the night on the conjured zip line cable.

His adopted son was left alone with the two other wizards.

"As I suppose neither of you had proper muggle education, I'll give you a crash course. Securocarcero will tie you in a safety harness, you must touch your wand to the lifeline to conjure your trolley. You hold on to your trolley with your non-wand hand so that you won't start spinning like a Sneakoscope. With your wand hand, you point forward and cast the strongest cushioning charm you can think of. There's the Ravenclaw main room's window on the other side of the cable, not very soft to crash into. Professor, you go first."

"Securocarcero ipsum." He sounded a bit unsure in what he was doing, but he was a professor of transfiguration, and he managed a proper harness for the first try.

"Good. Ready? Reverso!"

Suddenly the gravity turned around with the aged professor. A moment before, he was standing at the lower end of the cable, but now he found himself as if falling upwards, propelled to the castle by the sudden change in gravity.

"Wand forward!" Tom yelled after him.

He sealed his pocket, not to let his most-precious inkwell fall out, then turned to Son. He was already wearing the harness as well, although it seemed a bit lose and had more carabiners attached to its belt than would have been necessary.

"At worst, you'll fall into the lake. Nothing to worry about."

"Next time remind me to take you along for an auror mission," Prongs replied with a vengeanceful grin. "What have you dragged us into?"

"Muggles do it for fun. Ready? Reverso!"

-?-

Tom wasn't even halfway into the castle when he'd spotted why James came to a sudden halt. There was a witch on a broom, laughing like a maniac, mock-luring him closer. Around the Ravenclaw window, colorful spells were flying, as Padfoot and the headmaster were fighting their way into the building.

Tom looked down at the huge lake. Was the giant squid awake at this hour? James was close to the other shore, good for him, but Tom would have preferred if he didn't have to swim the rest of his way.

"Baby Belly, I'll get jealous if you start with another wizard in my presence."

"Tommy sweetie, I've been missing you! Missing cursing you!" she replied, not moving out of James's way. The shield spelled around her glowed with a barely-there reddish brown. It would have been lethal to crash into.

"James, you need to cut the cable!" Tom yelled.

"Do it! I fight!"

Now wasn't that an acceptable excuse? Prongs cast a fistpunch charm straight into Bellatrix's face, the greenish-yellow curse passing through her shield and giving her a black eye. In return, she conjured a ball of fire, which soon took the shape of a dragon.

Tom praised the muggles and their inventing stainless steel cables. Fiendfyre wouldn't spread the zip line, in fact, the only thing flammable here was...

"Your broom."

"Parsel!" James demanded, the Fiendfyre dragon reaching out to him.

"Finite securocarcero!" Tom yelled, ending both their harness-charms.

His banter with Bellatrix was ended, this time, by James falling into the lake. And Tom... Tom found himself airborne, held up by the dementor-cloak harness he'd been experimenting with, and didn't remove before Regulus came over.

-?-

"I can't remember the last time I came to visit this tower," Albus shared while Sirius helped him in through the window.

"I do," Padfoot replied. "I was snogging with a Ravenclaw girl, Melly or Alexia was her name..."

"It was Melissa White," Albus helped. "If you're referring to the time when Remus called us to un-stitch you from the carpet. Dear Miss White, she knew how to make you stay overnight. And Filius was away on some goblin business."

"The unforgettable Melly White. I hear she married Gideon Prewett?" Padfoot turned around to see if any of their pursuers would be foolish enough to continue the fight after the two of them landed safely.

"I dread the day their daughter comes to school."Albus also turned around, just in time to see Bellatrix starting a Fiendfyre and James falling into the water. "Am I seeing things, or is your son flying unaided?"

"I wouldn't put it beyond his crazy ideas... Professor, Tom is flying unaided!"

Tom whooshed past the Ravenclaw tower, with Bellatrix on his tail, and the witch followed by the fire-dragon she had conjured herself. He zig-zagged like a flying rabbit, maybe trying to use the many towers as cover, yelling "Now, professor!" occasionally.

But the witch had a very strong shield, one not penetrated by hastily-cast charms. It felt as if the Elder Wand had lent her its power, despite the witch not holding the precious artifact. Albus Dumbledore tried his freshly-bought wand, the Hallow one, borrowed Sirius's, but none were a match to the protection Bellatrix seemed to have conjured for herself. It seemed like the Elder Wand had decided to sabotage all his attempts to master it again. Besides, he tried to be careful, not wanting to curse the free-flying cambion with friendly fire.

"I'll have to try something else," he sighed after a while.

"Like what?" Sirius asked, taking his wand back. "For your information, Professor, it's horrible to just watch Tom almost getting torched and me being forbidden to help him."

"He forbade you?" Dumbledore asked with a knowing twinkle.

"He told me to not point my wand at Bellatrix until you defeated her for good. He wouldn't share why."

A few reductor spells hit the wall inches from the window, and while the castle's wards held, it was clear they wouldn't withstand a wave of broom-riding blood purists trying to blast their ways to the intruders. Eventually, the headmaster cast a Sonorus on his throat and yelled, "I need a few minutes. Can you hold her a little longer?"

"No!" Tom yelled back, then ducked yet another spell, "I'll meet you at the second floor's girls' bathroom!" With that, Tom Marvolo Riddle-Black disappeared from the airspace, a quiet splash indicating his landing in the lake.

-?-

Flying with the dementor-cloak harness was not what Tom had prepared himself for. After swimming to the shore and drying himself, he just sat down in the grass, panting, and... well... retching out his lunch. It had been like an insanely long portkey-travel, without the security of a safe landing. He wondered how it might have looked from the outside. For him, it was a dizzying, disorienting nightmare, yet the Gryffindor courage left by his upbringing demanded that he tried again. Sometime. Definitely not tonight.

At least he didn't lose his wand in his crazy uncoordinated flight. And he didn't crash into any of the walls or towers. Wasn't he lucky?

And he didn't curse Belly Girl out of instinct, either, which would have ruined his entire plan. The Elder Wand's loyalty had to be won back by Albus Dumbledore, or else there would never be three separate masters of the Hallows. Separate, independent, but on the same side and fighting for a mutual purpose. And at least one out of the three had to be an experienced leader, a role that simply couldn't be taken by a sixth-year student conducting his first-ever siege. That sort of leadership was the legacy of Antioch Perevell.

A werewolf-howl startled him from his musings. He had to find Son, and had to get moving, perhaps avoid being eaten or infected. Retching some more, he stood up. He had his inkwell (now it was more important than ever), he had his wand (with a feather from Fawkes, no less), he knew the back door through the school's drainage system (courtesy of Salazar himself) and he really had to get moving. He cast a Tempus and a smell-covering spell, wondering if it was any use – Remus had told him that in the moonlight a werewolf's sight is enough for him to spot a human. He quickly disillusioned himself, too.

Now, if only James could find him...

-?-

"What have I missed?" Lily queried after a kiss. "And which of you set that cottage on fire?"

"Long story, but really, it was none of us. And we got a little separated," replied James. "Padfoot and Albus got inside through the Ravenclaw tower, I fell into the lake, and I have no idea where Parsel has gone."

"Did he tell you what his great plan is?" Lily asked. She was starting to get skeptical.

"Yes, but... I doubt you'll like it. I don't think I like it, to be honest."

"Does it involve further necromancy?" Lily asked with a sigh. "Because I find it disturbing how none of us spoke up when he dug up poor Mundungus Fletcher."

"You had your chance," James pointed out. "Only, then, we would have had to drink up the Draught of Despair, and we'd be agonizing in St. Mungo's while the purists set their wards for their future base. How's Petunia?" He swallowed a few comments about Lily's less-than-favorable family, that with a jealous sister and a shortsighted brother-in-law. It was just sad how Dudley never had received any rules or guidance from them, and had never had any reason to show any respect in return. That young werewolf was growing on him.

"Pet's fine," Lily assured her husband. "She didn't even get Tom's letter."

"WHAT? Then just WHO drank up the ENTIRE dose?"

"She couldn't tell, either. Oh, before I forget. Have you wondered why Regulus Black suddenly turned his back on his pure-bred friends?"

James paused for a moment, because Lily's tone indicated there was more to Reg's sudden change of heart than just trying to save his brother from the oncoming massacre. "Did they _send_ him?"

"No. He was bitten last month, that's why he was shunned by his purist friends."

James scratched his head. "Just one more werewolf, that's fun."

As if on a cue, Dudley Dursley rammed them.

-?-

If Tom would have had time to stop, he could have been mesmerized at the teamwork Prongs and Lily demonstrated. Confident that his animal form cannot get infected, James positioned himself between his wife and her nephew while Lily rained jinx after hex on him, trying to slow Dudley down before eventually throwing the first purse of darkness powder. Her first hit seemed a success, the child took back his human form (or so Tom guessed, he obviously couldn't see the nine-year-old in the black mist) but Lily's stunner only held him immobile as long as the powder's fog lasted.

The next bag of the Peruvian powder was dodged, landing in the grass harmlessly, while the werewolf gained on his target, not so harmless. Lily's third throw hit him straight on the snout, filling his eyes and his nose with the powder. When the fog dissolved, the child was still trying to rub it out of his face, and James could, eventually, tie the muzzle's necklace on him. A few moments later the basket-shaped medal snapped on his face just as the curse took over Dudley again. Lily backed away, Prongs moved forward, the werewolf groaned with a feral rage but was too distracted to fight the enormous stag effectively.

Once she had reached the relative safety of three meters, Lily turned around and cast a complex binding spell. The wolf was still struggling to break free from his shackles, but now it was possible (if still not entirely safe) to conjure a wooden travel trunk around him, and tie that to Lily's broom.

"It seems you have to run all the errands tonight," James noted.

"Do you still don't trust me to return to you?" Lily grinned, kissing him again.

"More coming from the greenhouses' direction!" Tom yelled. Oddly enough, his voice seemed to be coming from the steep walls of the castle.

Lily hastily took off with her boxed nephew attached to the broom, but she returned after a quick circle. "They're chasing a wizard."

Neither Tom nor James could see one another, but they were certain they were both rolling their eyes.

"It's Snivellus, isn't it?" James finally asked.

-?-

With Dudley clawing at his travel box from the inside, Lily lowered her broom just enough for her childhood friend to grab its handle. Even with her featherlight charm on the werewolf box, the broom was overpacked and nose-heavy. She was forced to conjure a similar box for her friend so that he would at least not fall down, and then she beelined for the Hog's Head Inn's vanishing machine.

"If Snivellus weren't half the git he is, I'd be a very jealous husband right now," Prongs sighed once the two newcomer werewolves had lost the stag's trail.

"She promised to keep him boxed until you get home," Parsel reminded his fellow Hallow-owner.

"What a fun morning I'm looking forward to."

They trotted in silence for a few minutes, Tom trying his best to keep up with the stag while trying not to exhaust himself. Only when he reached the sewers did he stop to catch his breath. "All right, James, now hold on to my robe. I know my way around here, but we need to go in with our eyes closed. That is, unless you want to die a very quick death."

-?-

As it turned out, Fawkes was still in his adult form, just very exhausted from picking up letters (and some howlers, inquiring his whereabouts) addressed to his human. The headmaster fondly patted him on the head, agreeing that without his bird gathering his mail to his office, his last two days would have been marked with constant harassment from several hundred owls. He had needed his recovery time, and he couldn't have been more grateful for nobody disturbing him when he had been talking to his parents and Ariana.

That was the good news. The bad news was that Gryffindor's sword, an object powerful enough to aid him against the Wand's new master, had been moved from his office along with everything else. Even the portraits had been thrown in piles in a sideroom's darkest corner, with the Sorting Hat somewhere in their midst.

"Too bad it cannot be summoned," the headmaster sighed. He cast a ball of light, sending it to illuminate the weapon.

Confused hissing rewarded him immediately.

"Autumn!" Sirius grinned in relief, then reached to pat the snake on the head. "It isssss good to sssssee you again, friend. Sssssay, in all this messssss that wassssss made, did you ssssspot a sssstraight long ssssword with an enormoussss ruby in itsssssss middle?"

"All right, now that creeped me out," Albus Dumbledore admitted.

"My pronunciation is horrible. Autumn just learnt to put up with me. But I think you're getting your sword."

"It can only be held by a true Gryffind... Oh. Brave snake. Brave snake indeed."

Autumn emerged from the mess of un-summonable objects, dragging a long, ruby-decored sword by the handle in his mouth.

"He's what Harry calls an honorary Potter," Sirius explained. He offered his arm to the young snake, who quietly slithered to his robe's pocket. It wasn't as comfortable as the inkwell, but he supposed, tonight this will have to do.

Once armed, the headmaster turned back to a much newer object: the Marauder's Map. "We'll get company," he sighed.

Fawkes replied with a reassuring trill.

-?-

The sound of spells crashing into stone and various shield charms echoed through the corridors. The two wizards climbing out of the girls' bathroom washbasin, however, just shook their heads.

"I'll need a breath," the bespectacled one stated.

"I need some chocolate," the younger one concurred, and uncorked his inkwell. "Merlin's silver socks, he's gone!" he then bellowed.

"Who? Your chocolate?" Prongs asked.

"The other hostage! An aged Austrian wizard. I put him in here, and he left me with a 'Danke' note!"

"Do you still have your chocolate?" James ignored the lesser problem.

"It looks like... One. Here, eat it. I lost my appetite." Tom was more focused on the sheet of pale paper. Odd, it wasn't exactly the size of the pages in the notebook, and the ink colour didn't seem to match either. But apparently, that's what it was, a sheet of wrinkled, pale white paper, with the one German word and the Deathly Hallows emblem as a signature. "How could he get out? The inkwell doesn't open from the inside, and it was in my sealed pocket all along!"

Disappointed, he threw the paper away.

"Maybe he didn't appreciate your flying style," Son patted Parsel on the back. The young cambion, still not approving of bodily contact, just growled at him in a tone he must have picked up from Sirius. Prongs apologized and continued chewing the muggle-made chocolate.

He was almost done when his mirror started calling his name in Padfoot's voice.

"James, do you hear me? We need to take a shortcut!"

"We're at the Chamber entrance on the second floor."

"I can see you on the Map," Dumbledore joined the discussion, relief in his tone.

"Autumn found Gryffindor's sword for Albus, but Bellatrix seems to be off the map," Sirius continued. "And I saw Lily leaving with Dudley and Snivellus. Did both of them have fur?"

"No, but Snape was literally inches from being bitten. Which reminds me, Lily wants to tell you something when we get home."

"That doesn't sound good."

"Could be worse," Prongs argued, swallowing the last bits of his chocolate.

"I'll lure Bella Belly out," Parsel offered. "The last time I saw her, she was crash-landing in the pumpkins with a charred broom. Where to?"

"Entrance yard?"

"We'll meet you there, headmaster."

James packed his mirror away, wrapped himself in the Cloak of Invisibility (the corridors were enemy territory these days), and took one last look at the girls' bathroom before running after a furious Parsel.

The discarded pale sheet of paper gave a tired sigh, and cautiously started to transfigure himself back to his human form. His colour was almost the same, his thinness remained prominent. The emergency wand (if one can call it such) had bit his wrist twice already, but he knew better than to dispose of it yet. This one night had been more eventful for him than his previous four decades had been altogether, and the thank-you sheet transfiguration was in the top three of his most narrow escapes. Which was saying a lot.

He checked his appearance in the bathroom mirror. A frail old man looked down at him, who had seen better days. The Draught of Despair didn't do him much good, either.

He ruffled his ice-blond (no, let's be honest, aged-white) hair, and went to see what sort of transport could be used.

-?-

"Bellatrix Black!" the voice of Parsel echoed from the outer walls of the castle. "You monster, you bane of my existence! My life would be a boring, fluffy crap without you. And I dare you admit, you wouldn't enjoy being locked up while I'm out of your reach! Belly Bella, my bane! WILL YOU MARRY ME?"

There was only silence for a moment, as the purists (most of them still on the third floor, or arranging equipment for the ward-changing ritual) gathered to the windows, curious who dared to suggest that he could blemish the purest Black bloodline.

Then Tom was hit with a Cruciatus curse so strong that, despite his training and prepared mind, he almost fell on the stone pavement. He felt her rage burning through his every bone; her power, borrowed from the wand she had actually never held but had won regardless, crashed against his mental shields.

He held his mouth shut, he kept his balance. He kept his focus on the present and on his goal. He should only block her, he told himself again and again. He should just lure her closer. "That wouldn't be enough for a life sentence," he eventually proclaimed. "Is that your intent I feel lacking?"

"CRUCIO!" the witch with the crazy black curls bellowed. But by this time, Tom could also tell she was confused by her lack of success. People didn't usually shake her off... he was proud to be the first.

"Professor, I found her."

-?-

It was a force of nature that rushed towards Bellatrix, in the form of an aged man and his shining goblin-made sword. Dumbledore didn't seem to bother with his own shields, but he constantly held the blade in the line of her spells. The goblin-sword repelled or absorbed every one of them, the headmaster not slowing down as he approached her. For one, final curse, she pointed her claw-shaped wand at him, and the sword cut the walnut wood in half, swiftly ending their rematch.

And that was when the three Hallows' masters had, once in maybe centuries, stood on the same side, in an alliance tested by fire. The protection granted by the Cloak enveloped them, not exactly hiding them from human eyes, but shielding from anything that could present a mortal danger. The power of the strongest wand ever created now reached out to them, multiplying the strength of every spell they would cast. Then, tentatively first, those whom they had lost joined them through the Stone of Resurrection, not quite alive, but definitely present.

One particular shadow, one uncontrolled wave of a witch's will to fight, sparkled up the magic-filled, full moon night. In the wizarding school built a millennium before, her presence was like a tiny spark in a methane-filled room. The three Masters of Death, and their ally among them (adopted father of one) stood safely under the strongest protection of the Cloak while her lose magic ignited the power entangled to the castle.

"Protego totalus!" the Headmaster reacted, pointing the Elder Wand at his school, shielding the walls and the equipment, but not those who invaded it with the purpose of using it against the will of the founders.

"It should be enough," Tom Marvolo Riddle-Black whispered, mesmerized that his plan had really worked.

"I just hope everybody is safe and we can all go home and sleep it off," James sighed. "On the other hand, I expect to find about forty witches and wizards still hiding under whatever shield they could conjure, and evidence of an attempted ward-changing ritual scattered around the entire building."

"Yes, that's only realistic to expect, Cloak," Tom nodded. He went to check on his personal bane of existence, knocked out by the burst of magic, but he also tied her up for good measure.

The fire on the nearby property was still burning.

"Sssssome human ussssed my inkwell in my absssssence," Autumn lamented when he was finally given back to his partner. "At leassssst he'sssss gone. What ssssort of mannersssss isssss that?"

In the moonlit sky, a lone broomrider's white-blond hair shimmered for a moment, as he left Hogwarts's airspace.

-?-

It was almost morning when Sirius, James, and Tom finally emerged from the Vanishing Machine. James hurried to check on Dudley in the Potter Manor's wolf-proof basement, while Sirius took the staircase to his own cellar. "Kreacher, I'm an animagus, besides, your only human master at the moment. Let me in," he demanded.

Tom, a bit still disappointed to have lost the most famous wizard of the century from his pocket, sat down next to a sleepless Quirrel on the sofa. Without prompting, the lanky Ravenclaw shared, "This was the first time I saw a werewolf transforming from up close. He was more scared of himself than I was of him. And you were away, joining Hallows on the far side of Scotland."

"Next full moon will be better for everyone," Tom promised. "Well, at least, for those you care about."

"I don't know. Regulus seemed quite a decent person."

"Because that's what he is. He will just grow a little furry once a month, there are worse curses one has to live with. And it's much better than him being a blood purist."

"Maybe," Quir nodded, finally closing the book he'd been reading when the heroes had arrived home. "Before I forget, the guest room is taken. Some really shaken wizard landed here just an hour before you came home. He queried about someone named Bathilda, but he could barely stand on his feet, so I dragged him to the guest room's bed and he immediately fell asleep. He seemed to know his way around the house..."

The corners of Tom's mouth ran to his ears in a victorious grin. "I think I know who you're talking about."

-?-

An almost black large wolf sat on the cellar's magically softened floor, a tearful old house-elf trying to distract him from harming himself and preventing him from digging himself out. He let out a miserable howl of an abandoned animal, searching for never-existed pack mates, his call echoing from the soundproof walls. When he heard a human voice, followed by human footsteps, his ears turned towards the cellar's door, his mouth in a rabid snarl.

Then the wolf sat down on his ankles, gaze averted and face towards the wall, watching the newcomer from but the corner of his eyes.

In stepped a large dog, with black fur and proud grey eyes, his head held high, his tail wagging reassuringly. He moved closer to the wolf, taking in the other canine as the wolf rose to return the full-body sniffing. They circled around their mutual axis once, as it's compulsory in their species, then the dog (maybe an inch smaller than his wild relative) dug his snout into the wolf's mane, breathing in the familiar scent.

For the first time, timidly, the wolf also started wagging his (much shorter) tail. The dog returned the gesture, but then he ignored the invitation to play and just dropped down in a semi-circle, exhausted. He didn't seem to mind the wolf sniffing him all over, however, then curling into a similar shape by his side.

Despite all pretense, he was still awake when the sun came up and his brother returned to his human self.

Then he let out a soft growl and slept through the entire day.

-?-

Tom wasn't sure how his 'You may stay as long as you wish and I mean it' note, placed on top of a set of tidy robes and towels, had been taken, so he set the wards to wake him as soon as the surprise guest was up. The old wizard, however, registered to those same wards as one belonging to the place, a blood relative of the former owner, not a simple intruder who this house would be warded against.

So, by the time Springscales hissed Tom awake, the white-haired wizard was sitting comfortably in the living-room, reading Tom's incriminated OWL essay.

They exchanged quiet "Good morning"s, Tom silently swelling with pride as the infamous wizard turned the sheet. Those talentless Ministry workers had landed themselves in St Mungo's for touching the parchment. This wizard, this doubtlessly knowledgeable wizard, didn't even need a wand and he seemed to be approving of what was written there.

"Albus wrote about you in his letters quite a lot, Mr Tom Marvolo Riddle-Black. The parselmouth cambion, descendant of the school founder Salazar Slytherin himself. And I seem to recognize your handwriting from yesterday, you sent the inferus. My honest compliments."

Tom blushed, which didn't happen every year.

"You drank the Draught of Despair instead of just going along with the purists' offer, sir. They broke you out, and I don't think you could have asked anything of them they wouldn't have hurried to accomplish."

"Except for accepting no for an answer, Mr Riddle-Black," the old wizard replied. "My old concepts, my past goals, my late ideas... I reserve the right to divert from them. I reserve the right to deny and renounce them."

Tom took an armchair next to the sofa his guest had occupied, his eyes shining with unveiled adoration. They've been sitting face to face, and he still couldn't tell if the man was seriously preparing the ground to renounce everything that had made him famous for (oh, no, not _everything_ ) or if he was just being cautious with someone openly allied with Albus Dumbledore.

That was a talent, either way, and there was a level of grace in his words, despite Tom couldn't tell which of those he truly meant.

"I understand what you mean, sir," he concluded eventually. "They wanted you as their figurehead. You refused to be used as their weapon. I witnessed something similar just the day before."

The frail old wizard quirked a pale-white eyebrow.

"You disapproved of them taking you for the Hallow you are. A fourth, honorary Hallow."

A faint smile appeared on the aged wizard's face, and this time, it seemed honest and genuine. "Me, a fourth Hallow?"

"You can't deny, there's a striking resemblance between your chosen symbol and the Wand-Stone-Cloak."

"Mr Riddle-Black, that's the nicest thing I've ever been told in my life."

After this round of polite flattering, they sat in silence for a while. Tom quietly summoned the bag of lemon drops from the day before, placing it on the table in easy reach.

"Do I guess it right that the muggle werewolf you mention in your case study is related to the woman I have shared a lake with?"

Tom nodded. "And that woman has a sister, who is a witch and the best charms-wielder of her age. And she's married to the auror next door," he added, throwing a fistful of lemon drops in his mouth, his gestures deliberately showing that _he_ wasn't worried about the neighbourhood, and at the same time threatening the guest very subtly. "They're practically brothers in all but blood with the wizard who adopted me."

The aged one just smiled at the well-concealed warning, and continued reading the essay. "A young-bitten werewolf receiving a proper wizarding education, that sounds much like Albus's idea to me. Is he also family of yours?"

"A close friend. Or a very distant one, in the topographical sense."

"I deeply understand why you wouldn't make this essay readable to just anyone, Mr Riddle-Black."

"Tom. Please, sir, just call me Tom. Or Parsel."

"Gellert," the old wizard offered.


	6. Chapter 6 Riddle-Black

**Finders, keepers - Riddle-Black**

Sunshine, filtered only by the lush green leaves.

Moss on the rocks and the trickle of the creek he had remembered from his youth.

People around him. A wand in his hand.

The memories of a past he couldn't change now and couldn't make amends.

The horrid taste of the potion still in his mouth.

He had foreseen the misguided British blood purists coming for him, and he had glimpsed faint impressions of the people Albus had so often mentioned in his letters. Being free, even if not free from his past, was still a dizzying sensation. Sitting in the meadow of his youth, watching as a teenager and a nine-year-old were flying in the summer sky, was a luxury he had given up all hopes on. And Albus? Albus had not changed one bit, playing with other people's thoughts until they eventually did what he had expected of them. Not being able to resist him, though, had left something of a dent on his pride.

But the old meddler (old... They were the same age.) was right when he had pointed out Tom's need for a tutor. Someone who could teach him the Dark Arts ('the birthright of a cambion' were Dumbledore's exact words) complete with their dangers, with their downfalls, with the life experience that cannot be found in any books. The self-control and the proper understanding of what price each deed would require. Effects and counter-effects on a larger scale.

Currently, the young cambion was chasing a broom-riding child, although he himself had no need for a broom. The trees then covered them from his sight, he could only tell that they landed because soon after he could hear their footfalls and their quiet hissing – the cambion and the son of a local auror were talking in parseltongue whenever they were among themselves. Their bond was so profound, as if on a soul level.

In other words, the cambion was out of reach. (In addition to having his ideals set in stone already.)On the other hand? He truly needed tutorage. He needed guidance while growing into his birthright inheritance. (You, Albus...!)

When they spotted him, the son of the auror greeted him with a cheerful hiss before remembering that not all wizards around him would understand parseltongue. The cambion just smiled at the boy, the younger one's broom on his shoulder, dressed in muggle clothes and a dementor-cloak flight harness, sporting bruises from (presumably) hitting the trees again.

"How does your new wand feel, Gellert?"

"Splendid. It seems to understand how I share the fate of its former owner," he replied with complete honesty. This vintage piece had belonged to the dark wizard Loxias in his youth... Tom had bought it in the antiques shop at Knockturn Alley, exactly because he had a sense ofcruel irony.

Six years before, the former master of the Elder Wand had felt a grim satisfaction when Albus had first written about the cambion that had been sorted to the house of the darkest wizards in Britain, then had brought down an entire school corridor in a fight with the less self-conscious children of his kin. Gellert had laughed and written back that it wasn't like cambions couldn't be controlled: one just has to make deals with them instead of counting on malleable emotions, never challenge them unprepared, and not try to touch them if not with the purpose of causing them pain. (Torture was unwise to do anyway, as all cambions are strong in magic and they remember every insult they ever suffered. And their talent for forgiveness is infamously lacking.)

Then, just the day after he had returned to the house Bathilda Bagshot had once owned and was now inhabited by the Blacks, Albus had warned him yet again about Tom being the most ambitious and stubborn man he had ever encountered. Gellert had thought his old rival / enemy / equal had been exacerbating. All of Dumbledore's warnings had been proven well-founded, however, that same day. The aged war criminal had made a very tentative notion that the neighbouring muggle widow could pick the cherries from her tree herself, instead of enlisting Tom and Harry to do the job in exchange for but some cakes she would bake. He had really just wanted to hear the opinions of a modern pureblood and a wizard-raised cambion.

In the next half hour Tom had given him a well-structured lecture about how the differences between wizarding and magicless people shape two different cultures, how their capabilities complement each other, and how muggle technology had always given ground to magical discoveries. After demonstrating this thesis on a wizarding photograph (which had been based on the muggle use of muggle chemicals, and the only difference was made by a potion used in the last stage of the film's development)Tom had continued with the theory of compensating one ability's loss with the evolution of another, and, simultaneously, the degradation of abilities that are no longer essential. As wizards have magic, they no longer depend on logic, which WOULD otherwise be an important factor of survival, and this leads to an average wizard using his head less often than a comparable muggle. This phenomenon can be observed on the individuals' level, but if it runs through generations, it leads to extremely stupid purebloods who are quick to accept another's view as their own, who are prone to make horrendous errors in the Wizengamot and other governing bodies, not to mention upholding harmful habits like inbreeding, their system of prejudice based on ungrounded fears, and their complete lack of critical thinking... At this point, Sirius had to interfere and quietly remind Tom that Gellert had merely asked why he intended to help Mrs Taylor with her cherry tree. And Tom had shrugged and went to pick cherries, summing up his speech with "because she bakes a delicious cherry tart." Gellert had the feeling he could have continued for another hour and a half with the clear intent of challenging him for a debate.

Now that same cambion was walking down the hillside with the son of the auror, daring him to ask why he was wearing muggle trainers instead of dragonhide boots.

"Have you managed the Protean charm variation we talked about this morning?" he asked instead. If Tom had a weak spot, it was for knowledge he couldn't find elsewhere. 'The birthright...'

Tom hissed something to the even younger wizard, who then hurried down the village on his own, leaving the two of them to discuss a set of human hand bones that would be used as synchronized portkeys. "I got the knuckles all right, but when I added the metacarpals, those messed up the entire arrangement," the cambion sighed. "Everywhere I read that portkeys shouldn't be applied too frequently at the same space, because it destabilizes them, so I let them air out a little before I would continue."

"But you _do_ have the knuckles together?"

"Not yet as stable as I want to have them, sir."

"It's more than all right for your portkeys to disperse in your first week of learning to create them. Tying them together with a Protean charm is an even more complex task. If you continue with the same enthusiasm, you'll get the entire fist to move together by Saturday."

"Thank you, Gellert."

"Don't overtax yourself. You'll still have a lot of time to use that bone fist."

"When you first mentioned it, it sounded so convenient." Which it was, a set of human hand bones that can be sent through normal wards to grab any object of interest, then return with the item in hand. If the keeper of the object had only warded their treasure against summoning and its place against apparation, a bone fist could still be used to lift the guarded item. Many precautions had to be taken, however. And one needed a severed human hand as the source material.

"May I ask what makes you so sure Auror Potter would approve of me teaching this?"

Tom sat down in the grass with a weary sigh, just out of arm's reach, Harry's broom by his other side. "They still cannot legally gather evidence against Crouch," he shared, "and the trials start in a few weeks."

"Does it sit well with an auror to have you charm the bones of a human hand to deliver the evidence he needs?" Though, considering what Albus had written about James Potter when _he_ had been attending school, the auror was not only capable of thinking outside the rules, but he spent little time thinking _inside_ them.

"Have I told you why Gringotts no longer has dragons?" the cambion asked back. "That also started as Prongs' evidence-gathering mission."

From the story that young Riddle-Black shared, under very strict confidentiality, Gellert again got the impression of a rather free-minded wizard with the soul of a prankster and the heart of a public hero. Who would feed de-aging potion to fiveGringotts' lizards just to ensure that, once they regained their size, the chaos in their wake would cover the traces of an auror searching some ancient family vaults?

He needed to get a better picture of James Potter for a reason more important than just the headache he had once caused to the goblins: Tom had convinced James to be his secret-keeper. As far as the public was informed, the old war criminal had been buried under the debris when Nurmengard had collapsed in a failed attempt of the blood purists to abduct him. 'Gellert Grindelwald survived the break-in' was safely hidden in James Potter's soul, only shared with a select few. As long as the Fidelius charm held, the old wizard could move freely in Godric's Hollow without anyone realizing it's him. But should he harm anyone or try to escape, James would alert his auror colleagues, and should the secret-keeper die of any reason, the secondary keepers like Albus Dumbledore would be able to bring even more reinforcement. That would be more than enough to subdue a fallen tyrant who had been wasting away in his own prison four and a half decades already, who had lost his wand...

"Gellert?"

"Yes, Parsel?"

"You're lost in your thoughts again. Let the past be."

"My past won't let _me_ be."

"...I more than understand."

For a moment, they sat in silence, maybe a master and an apprentice, maybe a keeper and an escaped convict, maybe as two powerful wizards, one experienced and one without guilt. Maybe just two men, as equals as Death and Ignotus.

"Heat," Tom finally recited. "Water. Magic. Food. Truth." He paused, perhaps for emphasis. "Time."

"That's quite dense philosophy."

"You need to come to terms with time," he diagnosed. "And with truth. And with the seventh one I keep forgetting."

-?-

Padfoot's gift for Tom's seventeenth birthday had been a blue Royal Enfield motorbike, complete with a number of additional spells and a shrinkable sidecar. The Potters had given him a camera that James had acquired straight from the MI6 and Lily had encased in a box that kept magic out and thus kept the electric parts working properly, although it limited the motion in the taken pictures. Albus had awarded him a gold medal labelled 'first prize of professional meddling and manipulation' and had shared that he owns a very similar item. Tom suspected that the two medals were somehow connected, but didn't yet have time to figure out how it worked.

The day after, he departed on his new bike for what would be a three-weeks long journey. He visited Peter Pettigrew in Albania and Remus Lupin in Peru, and parted from both of them with the promise they would return home eventually. Uniting four Marauders couldn't be much harder than uniting three Hallows had been.

-?-

The trials of the captured blood purists started on the day of his return, so he didn't have much time for a recount. He had to present himself as the current head of the still-remembered Slytherin family, as well as giving his own statement, and he had to catch up with James Potter's report of the recent findings. The most he could do was to hand an envelope full of photographs to his adoptive Idiot, telling him that the pictures were concealed with soul magic, so he could flip through them even during the trials, without the risk of anyone else seeing one of them.

"You're the most considerate monster I've met in my life," Sirius told him, trying it be heard in the background noise of Courtroom Ten. "I'm glad to have you back."

"So am I. Have you seen Professor Flitwick? I have a diadem for him."

-?-

"Before the trials today, the Wizengamot offers the opportunity for announcements from its members as usual," Minister Bagnold spoke up. "Regulus Arcturus Black, from the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, please."

There was a murmur. With the full moon only a day before, Regulus was still visibly pale and worn-out, his appearance clearly proving the malicious gossip about his condition. He ignored those voices and spoke with a clear, healthy tone. "Fellow magicals, as you must already have heard, my elder brother Sirius Orion Black had left our family and he willingly gave up the noble duties and responsibilities that being a Black represent. Today, in front of you all, I, Regulus Arcturus Black, declare that despite everything that had happened, and not challenging him for the decision he made, he is still my brother and he is still my closest family."

There was a confused grumble, as the audience tried to make sense of the announcement. So, would a werewolf still remain the head of a Noble and Most Ancient House? Or did he set the ground for his almost-disowned older brother to claim the title that should have always been his?

Padfoot didn't let the whispers last. He stood up from his seat, in the row for the witnesses. "Fellow magicals, hear my announcement. I, Sirius Orion Black, declare that Regulus Arcturus Black is my brother, has been in the past, and will always be in the future. I acknowledge him as the head of our family, and he has my gratitude for carrying on the burden I refused. Thank you, Reg."

There were no other announcements that day.

After exchanging a long and cheerful smile with his brother, Sirius returned to the photographs while the list of accusations was read for the first captured purists. The very first picture taken shoved the hillside near Godric's Hollow, Elder Lane, as Tom had been testing if the specially boxed camera could indeed function while magic had enveloped the photographer. The young wizard still had a lot to learn about flying with his harness, but the photograph of the green hillside was clear. The white flowers of blooming elder trees stood out in the shape of the Wand-Stone-Cloak symbol, and amidst the trees, Padfoot could make out the tiny shapes of two old wizards chatting, arguing, laughing and sometimes hexing each other.

Sirius blinked at the Chief Warlock in question, who was now wearing his traditional Wizengamot robes, with a similar envelope from Tom in front of him. Albus seemed to be much happier and care-free since that very long full moon night.

Padfoot's gaze wandered on to Regulus (he was still coming to terms with his infection, but he was in good hands) and to Tom, who was watching the court session from the Slytherin family's seat. He stood in stark contrast with the headmaster: Parsel didn't let it show, but he was still burdened by whatever had happened to him in Azkaban. He had seen something family-related, that was all he was willing to reveal so far.

With an uneasy shrug, Sirius returned to the photographs. The next few were taken in Peru, at the blackweed plantation, showing Remus, the boring alpha Juan, and a few other werewolves who were taking care of the fields. There was a shot of Moony and Parsel, the latter wearing a scuba mask to protect his eyesight from the darkness pollen. On the back of the photo, Sirius read a shaky promise that Remus would quit his job sometime, and return to Britain soon.

After some pictures of various snakes around Castelobruxo (one of them was actually a teacher of Potion Ingredients Studies)there was a pile of newspaper cutouts, and Sirius couldn't suppress a deep frown. Of course he had heard about this excurse: James had somehow discovered that the Spanish ministry was hiding evidence for the British purists, and he agreed to meet Tom there and see what they could do about it. Nobody exactly stated it out loud, but Godric's Hollow's resident dark wizard had also been taken along. The next day, the Head Auror of Spain had announced that she didn't believe what the international press had stated about Nurmengard's destruction, and warned people to stay alert. That must have been the most one could reveal about Grindelwald's survival with the Fidelius charm, while (according to James) she could have just handed the documents over to the auror and the old seer. Instead she chose to oppose them. The next day's paper had a dozen of inferi on the editorial, as they were climbing / shambling from the morgue towards the Head Auror's home.

Sirius was at a loss. Normally, he would have pulled the line at dark magic (and necromancy qualified without a doubt) but the female auror had it coming, and a dozen inferi climbing her way must have been a sight to wake up to.

There was a note pinned to the last article in Tom's handwriting. 'I know it was childish to race corpses across a muggle city, but 1, Son got the distraction he asked for (this Sirius didn't doubt) 2, I let Fourth Hallow win this time, but 3, next time I'll get gas lighters for my cadavers and see how he fares against me then.'

Sirius closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. So this was how Tom got involved. His adopted son had packed out half a mortuary (with the other half being packed out by Grindelwald) for a prank. Should he scream Tom's (and James's) head off for the idea, or rather, for leaving him out?

After the newspaper articles came a photo of magnificent summits still covered in snow, a dark building blown up by the purists, and an aged wizard with different eyes sitting on the topmost rock of the ruins. Sirius turned the picture around. 'Taken by James Potter, 30th of June, 1989.' He suspected this photograph could be a form of James willingly sharing the soul-buried information about the old wizard's survival. On the other hand, it depicted how old Gellert had nothing but his many years, a centuries-old used wand and his recently-regained freedom, and he still bore his losses with his head held high.

He blinked up to see the court's doings. Closest to him sat the accused witch Druella Black née Rosier, next to her, her husband, Cygnus Black. Sirius frowned at the unkempt white beard and bald head of his uncle. The rumours about Druella's poison might have had some truth to them. But as he was already familiar with their roles in the attack on Dumbledore and he had heard James lament long enough about the lack of evidence in general, he turned his attention back to the photographs after a few seconds.

There was a picture of James and Gellert both cuddling with Tom under a life-size turul statue. 'The cambion has lost a bet,' unfamiliar neat handwriting announced on the back side. Then, the three of them wearing nothing but swimming pants and sunglasses, labelled, 'Greater Good has lost a bet'.

Those were followed by some pictures taken at the Carpathian Turul Reserve: enormous birds as seen from the ground and from the air, sometimes chasing the photographer because the rule of no brooms in the Reserve (easily circumvent by Tom and his harness) must have been in place for a reason.

There was a Hungarian Horntail dragon snoozing in a forest, then a large lake with turul hawks circling above it. A cheerful witch and a fortress built of red sandstone – the note read, 'Sarolta's inn at Balatondelej–must return!'

A sporty-looking man was standing by Tom on the next photo, he had rare, mousy hair, and there was something familiar about him but Sirius still turned the picture around for the commentary. 'Recognize him?' No... Not until the familiar stranger grinned, revealing unnaturally long front teeth, and Sirius all but gawked at the photograph in surprise. This athletic person, wearing muggle clothes... He couldn't believe this was Peter!

But yes, he was. On the next shot, he was in his more recognizable rat form, though (again) not nearly as fat as he had always been in his youth.

The Chief Warlock announced a coffee break, and Sirius soon found himself surrounded by James and Parsel.

"Let me guess, you're at the howler the Fourth Hallow sent to Wand?" Tom smirked. "It really hurt my feelings when he called me an 'infernal, nefarious monster'. And not just that, I woke to no less than three mountain trolls in my bedroom!"

"What did you do, Tom?" Padfoot queried, making sure every other witch or wizard had already hurried over to the buffet. "I thought he was your idol!"

"Tom started on his 'muggle inventions are important for wizardkind' lecture again," Prongs began. "Ge... Fourth Hallow just got down to making Nu... his home somewhat habitable again. Tom suggested to add an elevator. They disagreed. Tom sprayed the stairs with... What is it called?"

"WD-40," Parsel replied with an innocent smile. To Sirius this didn't bode well. "I prepared the staircase with a sticking charm before applying it, and after thoroughly spreading an entire flask I added a set of spells to make it magic-resistant so that it wouldn't be easily removed."

No, this definitely didn't bode well.

"I might have added a few goblin charms Professor Flitwick shared with me," Tom finally admitted. "It starts spreading when somebody tries to vanish the protected item – the stairs, in this case. Gellert was furious at me presenting a challenge he cannot solve."

James nodded. "But you should have seen them when Albus arrived and not e... Oh, it's nice to see you, Mr Black."

"Auror Potter, Sirius, Mr Riddle."

"I'm Riddle-Black," Tom corrected him immediately. "May I congratulate on your release, sir."

Sirius just blinked at the newcomer. Had old Cygnus Black been released while he was gawking at Tom's photos? But really, him being Druella's victim had gained him some support and compassion.

"Thank you, Mr Riddle. Now, noble gentlemen, I believe we were all witness to Mr Riddle announcing..."

"Riddle-Black!"

"...announcing his intent to marry my daughter Bellatrix."

"I think she declined," Sirius immediately reminded him.

"She didn't say no," Tom grinned.

"As her fiancé, you'd be expected to stand by her side and offer your support," old Cygnus Black pointed out.

"It's nice of you to expect Tom to die of his wife's poison just like... Ehm," Sirius finished his sentence with a series of coughs. "Sorry, Uncle Swan. You look good today."

James was the only one to keep up a serious face. "With Sirius almost disowned and Regulus being a werewolf, there's a good chance Walburga Black will leave the Black fortune to her nieces instead of either of her sons."

"I can totally imagine Andromeda being her number one beneficiary," Tom remarked, then grinned viciously at Cygnus Black's pained expression.

"I'm sure you understand I'm talking about Bellatrix. As much as I adore little Draco, I don't want his father to inherit all the family fortune," Cygnus stated. "And I think you, my noble gentlemen, don't wish for him to gain more influence on the Wizengamot than what he already has."

"We're making no promises, uncle." Sirius's tone was cold and final.

"Yes, we aren't," Tom added. "But you can tell Bella that I don't care what her choice would be."

James quirked an eyebrow. "Parsel?"

"Bella said she would sooner kiss a dementor."

-?-

It still surprised Sirius when, in the middle of Bellatrix Black's trial, Tom stood up and voiced his objection.

"Fellow magicals, while you're obviously correct about Belly Bella pointing her wand at me and saying the incantation of an Unforgivable, you're forgetting the most basic element of magic. As I have already told her right then and there, the intent behind her curse was completely missing, and because of that, the cursing didn't occur."

There was a loud murmur from all around Courtroom Ten.

"Maybe in a similar situation, the wand of the accused could be required to demonstrate its last spells, but as we all remember, the wand in question was destroyed in an oncoming fight. I'm not saying she wasn't among those who invaded Hogwarts, attacked the headmaster, and then intended to use the place for strictly prohibited magic. But is there one of the witnesses who had seen me under her curse?"

Silence.

"I object the objection!" Auror Alastor Moody entered the central area. "Mr Riddle-Black left out relevant information. He has been trained to fight off the Cruciatus curse."

"With all due respect, I object your objection to my objection, Auror Moody," Tom replied. "According to Act XXIII on Auror Recruitment and Training, no event that has occurred in the top-level auror training rooms can be used or referred to in court. Thus, the training I received is inconsequential in the legal sense."

Albus Dumbledore, Chief Warlock, rose from his seat. "Mr Riddle-Black, do you understand your statement makes all the difference between Bellatrix Black receiving only four to eight years instead of a life sentence?"

"Professor Chief Warlock, I do." With that, Tom sat back to the Slytherin seat next to his adoptive father's brother, but still eyeing the curly-haired witch in question. Even with the sedative potions the aurors had forced down her throat, she was giving him murderous looks, mouthing that she would castrate him one day. "You will try, on the day you give birth to my firstborn," Parsel mouthed back confidently.

-?-

As they expected, the next coffee break started with Cygnus Black running down his nephew's adopted son, but before he could have said a word, the Head of Slytherin, Horace Slughorn pulled them all aside into a soundproof alcove. "Riddle-Black, you really surprised those who don't know you well enough!" the chubby professor started, hinting that, unlike those others, he understood the cambion – which wasn't the case by far, but Tom felt it would be petty to point that out.

"Professor, it's nice to see you again."

"Tom, dear. Cygnus here is saying that he's very happy to welcome someone of Slytherin's blood to his family, are you not, Cygnus?"

The poisoned wizard gaped, as if trying to start a tirade about a filthy half-blood blemishing the always-pure bloodline, but Professor Slughorn didn't allow him the opportunity. "I've seen you fighting through six years, and in the teachers' room I wasn't the only one making bets that the two of you would get married one day. The fact that you've both had time fallouts also means that your fates are bound on a level we ordinary wizards struggle to understand."

Again, Cygnus took a breath to interject, but he was hushed, again. Tom leant against the wall of the alcove, feeling the buzz of the anti-eavesdropping spells against his skin. He wished Barty Crouch, in fact the both of them, overheard this discussion.

Meanwhile, Professor Slughorn continued."You saving Bellatrix from a lifetime imprisonment means she'll be in your debt when she's released. And her parents," here he poked his fellow Slytherin wizard, "will be forever grateful. Isn't that so, Cygnus?"

The poison-weathered wizard nodded with a grave grumble.

"Do we have your blessing, then, sir?" Tom looked the wizard, daring him to speak his mind. "Do you allow me to marry your daughter Bellatrix Black on the day of her release?" From the corner of his eyes, he could see the potions professor nodding vigorously.

"Rumour has it you're a cambion," Cygnus Black finally remembered an excuse."Your kind doesn't reproduce."

"I'm fertile," the young man assured his future father-in-law. "And there are ways around physical contact. I won't die a virgin, and Belly won't, either."

"I have one condition," Bella's father huffed after some rumination. "Your children will carry on the name Black. None of your Riddle nonsense."

"As both the parents would be Blacks, that's not a sacrifice on my part," Tom agreed. "Now, excuse me, sirs, I think the Chief Warlock is looking for me."

-?-

Officially, nobody but the Head Auror knew why Severus Snape wasn't among the accused. He had provided essential information about the purists, that's what the Wizengamot was told, although he hadn't even seen the documentation had 'provided' before the trial. James Potter smirked at him, without saying the obvious facts aloud: that he was acting on Lily's strict orders and that now they stood at a double life debt. Besides, the potioner had a troll-proof alibi for the morning those papers had been liberated from Spain.

Snape appeared like he would have preferred a life sentence.

-?-

"Tom, my boy, a mutual friend of ours is worried by a vision about you."

It was the end of a long day, and Tom longed for nothing but a good night's sleep, unbothered by any human, in his own bed after three weeks of travel. They apparated to Godric's Hollow, then continued the discussion.

"Professor, Gellert has seen my future wife casting a castration spell at me while she's in labour. I have a minimum of six years and nine months to learn a counter-spell. Lemon drops, sir?"

"Just one, please. I was about to offer you the same."

The two wizards settled on a bench in the village's main square, facing a graffiti on a wizarding guest house. The sketch depicted a very embarrassed-looking skeleton, trying to cover his (bony) crotch with (bony) hands. It wasn't hard to guess which episode of the local folklore the drawing was referring to. Somebody wrote a hint by the structure's window, nevertheless: 'most reluctantly'.

"Poor Death," Albus Dumbledore nodded in the graffiti's direction.

"Somehow he reminds me of a wizard who couldn't get into his own, freshly reconstructed castle, because of some slippery stairs," Tom Marvolo Riddle-Black mused aloud, wondering why that handwriting appeared so familiar. "Did you manage to get around the WD-40?"

The Master of the Elder Wand shook his head, but winked in his usual, merry way. "No, but an alchemist friend of mine did. He's the one who made the gold medals for us. Dear Nicolas has a reason not to particularly like Gellert, but he called those stairs the first real vocational challenge in the past four hundred years."

"I'm pleased to hear that." He could only imagine what 'a reason not to like Grindelwald' might have been. And, apparently, the fallen wizard's exuberant self-assurance had finally gotten trimmed back by an alchemist whom he had deeply wronged. James would call it justice, Springscales would say it's time and truth combined. "But why do I have the feeling you want something from me, professor?"

"See, Tom, Professor Warren was under Imperius for at least half a year. She doesn't feel up to teaching Defense anymore. I managed to convince her to return at least in part-time, but I need someone for the position."

"And you want me to recommend the next Defense teacher? Professor, Moony might be willing to teach for the fun of it, but he's in no need of a salary, and I doubt the parents would be happy with a werewolf. Peter, well, he can return to Britain anytime now, as his promise to find the diadem has been fulfilled, but he met a squib girl in Albania and she's a bit reluctant to move. In fact, Peter says the entire Fountain from the Department of Mysteries would be needed to change her mind. And Gellert is a sensitive old man whom I adore but cannot imagine as a trusted teacher for just everybody."

"That's why I pleaded with Myrtle Warren to stay one more year so that you could learn into the task, as well as finish your education."

"...What."

"Tom, my boy, you could be the best Defense teacher Hogwarts ever had. You're talented, you have insight, the topic comes naturally to you. I assure you, Hogwarts and its seven years of students will provide you with all the challenge you might be seeking."

"Professor, no. I have my plans for my future. I want to complement the Siriusly Enchanted Objects with tools that are magical from the beginning – Marvolous objects, like my inkwell, like the dementor-cloak flight harness, and for that, I have three very knowledgeable tutors in addition to the training I receive from Gellert."

"Three knowledgeable tutors?" Dumbledore frowned. "Have I ever heard about them?"

"Yes, you most certainly have." With that, Tom took the inkwell from his pocket, uncorked it, and, careful not to spill its contents, put it aside. The glass jar was important, but the most invaluable part was the black stone hidden inside the unsuspicious cork. "Let me introduce them to you, Professor, although you might have met them already. They've been around ever since that full moon we joined forces." He held the Stone in his palm, and turned it around three times. "They've set quite the standard in terms of magical objects, don't you think?"

The first spirit to appear, a proud man with a thin, nail-like moustache and dagger-shaped beard, however, spoke against Tom turning down the offer. "For a true achievement, you will always need true motivation. Take this advice from your own ancestor, Tom. Accept that position to teach."

"But Cadmus!"

"Your ancestor is right," said another man, sporting a peculiar, square beard. "If you fight just for yourself, you'll fare no better than I did. Work for the benefit of an entire wizarding generation."

"But Antioch!"

"You will still have the summer holidays to chase your personal dreams," the third one added. He had a smooth face and a friendly, reassuring smile. "And what better place for ideas than a castle so densely filled with magic?"

"But Ignotus!"

"You heard us," said Cadmus Perevell.

"Don't forget, you'll have your own daughter's future to be mindful of," added Ignotus.

"And don't you back away from the challenge!" finished Antioch. "Put your courage together and say yes!"

With a defeated grimace, Tom put the Stone back into its cork cover, and plugged his inkwell. "Professor, I'm still not sure if this is a good idea."

"No, but I am, Tom. It took me long enough to accept, but do you know how the saying goes? Keep your friends close..."

"...And your bodyguard, even closer."

"Exactly. Lemon drops?"

-?-

'My deeply respected Hallow,

Thank you for your timely warning. I have blocked Belly's castration curse, and I'm proud to inform you about the new addition to the family and enclose the first photo of Delphini Black. Lily says she takes after me, but I'm not sure. Do you think I cursed off my own father's nose three hours into my existence?

Tom the Marvolous,

Godric's Hollow, 18th June, 1996.

P.s. Please GG, rescue me from this pit of do-gooders! Or at least drop by whenever you have time. We'd be honored. – Bella Riddle-Black.'


End file.
